Ya know, these new fuel injected Suzuki's don't have a choke lever - they don't even have a fuel petcock (little three position lever with On-Off-Reserve settings for the fuel feed). There is absolutely no challenge to starting one. Well, I guess with the scooter you do have to remember to have the kickstand up and squeeze a brake lever - the V-Strom doesn't even require those little details.
Ever own a kick start single cylinder street bike? I'm talking about kick start only - no electric starter at all. I had two. Now those were a worthy challenge to start. For my 1980 Suzuki GN400 single, you had to twist the fuel petcock to the 'On' position, turn the ignition key, set the choke, swing out the starter lever and crank it gently until you felt resistance from the piston reaching the top-dead-center position of the compression cycle, squeeze the compression release lever on the handlebar, then jump on the starter lever. If you got everything just right, it would start.
If not, then perhaps try a little different choke setting, reposition the cylinder, squeeze the compression release, and kick again. The tricky part was the choke. If the bike was dead cold, pull it all the way out. If the bike was fully warmed up and had just been turned off for a few minutes - no choke. But if it was partially warmed up, you had to guess - somewhere in the middle would work (probably).
The worst thing was if you accidentally stalled it, partially warmed up, in traffic, with a passenger on the back. The pressure was on, 'cause the car behind you was already honking its horn... :twisted: Now you had to have the passenger get off so you could fold up the passenger foot peg and fold out the starter lever. You had to go through that starting drill, hoping that you set the choke to the proper partially open position. Once started, the passenger had to remount the bike.
Then there was the time when I kicked, and kicked, and kicked... without so much as a single pop from the engine. Somewhat exhausted, I finally noticed that I must have inadvertently hit the kill switch on the handlebar, switching it to the Off position. Arrghh!
My first motorcycle, an ancient Ducati single, did not have a compression release lever like the Suzuki. That make it harder to kick over. And it would occasionally backfire when attempting to start it, which would result in the kickstart lever being thrown back upward with great force, darn near breaking my foot in the process. Ouch!
Ahh... The good old days... :?