Ignore the blog time/date stamp: this a retrospective update to get things rolling: the timings and workload weren't conducive to the real-time update that will follow from this point forwards.

Friday 9th April 2010: 18.00am

At last: a chance to put a few miles on it, blow the cobwebs away after putting the magazine to press, and deal with some important business that was deferred while the production crises loomed all at the same time.

Still plenty of the first tank of fuel, the tyres were scrubbed-in and the sun was up.All three couldn't have been better. I dug out my Hood armoured jeans, and the Switchback jacket that has been tucked away since last summer and set about packing the FXRG waterproofs that we're testing in to their small sacks before heading out to the bike.

Must have spent half an hour working out where I could stash them without them falling off or risking marking the paint/powder-coating with the bungees that were at hand, so I left them in the shed and struck out. Looks like I'll need to be more creative next time.

It didn't matter: it felt like summer, the sky was clear, the forecast positive and I was only going to the other side of the hill that represents the backbone of the country this far south: if it rained, I'd get wet. How wet could you get in fifty miles? What a stupid question! I'd not really thought about it before, but the more time you spend with big lazy American motorcycles, the more that the word 'only' creeps in when talking distances. I used to commute twenty-five miles a day each way and knew all too well that all but the best waterproofs would breach within twenty. But what the hell! The magazine was being printed, the stress was over.

First time out on proper dry roads on a Fat Bob since the CVO model twelve months earlier, I was very aware of the weight of the front wheel and suspicious of the tyres: the Fat Bob is the last Dyna that still runs a sixteen inch rear, and a Dunlop at that, but it was only a matter of adjusting myself to the bike.

It had felt unsure in the wet, but all 'new' bikes do and it doesn't do to push your luck.

I'd resolved to consciously ride this 'properly', which is to say without touching the footrests down unnecessarily: they'd arrived intact, and the great and the good of the motorcycle press weren't going to get their hands on it, so might as well practice 'the technique' from the outset.

Didn't need to on the first fee roundabouts: too busy getting a feel for whether it's going to drop-in as much as it feels like it will - yes it does on the first roundabout, but successively less with every new encounter. And then you scuff your heel, so revert to a the technique of a protectionist riding style.

A what?

Stand on the outside footrest ... well, apply your weight. It's something I picked up from Axel Scherer, CCE Germany's PR man, when we were road-testing kit bikes aeons ago, as about the only way to get their low-riding 'Bomber' with its super-low and unbending footrests round corners. The sight of him hurtling round sweeping bends almost upright has stayed with me, and it was my turn to try it.

It's something else to think about, and it makes corners even more fun, but at the expense of lapsing into laziness on the straights, which is when I discovered that it really doesn't like to do seventy on fast dual carriageways.

It's partly to do with the aggressive riding position, a few people have suggested the tyre characteristics have something to do with it, and I'm not the only one who's noticed it. You'll need your 10% speedo error +2mph and a friendly traffic cop until you get a feel for the feel of the engine, but with a Davida helmet, stock pipes and no tacho, you slip into a cruise-control state that seems to be set at eighty. Uncanny. Slow down consciously, and slip back into it again. Always eighty, almost always automatically. I'm going to dig out my old Momo and see if that lets any more engine noise through to curtail those tendencies. I'm glad it arrived with nearly 400 miles on it.

The fifty-odd miles were covered ridiculously easily, and even a phone call to explain that there were big holes in the magazine where the ad pages didn't match the spaces for them on the magazine's flatplan didn't dampen my spirits, and I managed the return leg in fading light and reducing temperatures without once regretting leaving the waterproof behind.

If this was going to be how the summer panned out, bring it on.

But then, of course, I'll be handing the Fat Bob over to Rich when the Vision arrives, but at least I'll have somewhere to put my waterproofs ...