It's only about a month since I passed my motorcycle license (on the second try, but the less said about that the better), and I ended up buying an absolutely fantastic motorcycle - the Kawasaki Versys.

At first, the V and I weren't friends: Within minutes of wanting to go on my first ride, I dropped the bike on its side. Extremely embarrassing, saved only by the fact that nobody saw it. I picked her back up easily enough, but was red-faced and humbled: Compared to the Honda XR and scooters I had been riding before, this V is an entirely different beast.

The V is more powerful than any bike I've ever ridden before, but that's not a huge problem - in theory, there should be no difference between riding a 125cc bike and a 1300cc bike, as long as you keep your right hand under control: The throttle control on a 125cc can be used as an on/off switched even by relatively inexperienced riders (you're either accelerating full bottle, or on the brakes); try that on a 'busa, and they'll have to scrape the back of your motorcycle helmet off the tarmac after you've gone a full loop-the-loop.

No, the really big surprise had nothing to do with power - and everything to do with weight. The Kawasaki Versys is a very tall bike - which is odd, because in photographs, it doesn't come across as such. Stand next to one, though, and you'll get the impression. My girlfriend summed it up: "You don't expect me to sit on the back of this thing, do you? I can't even climb up on it!". (I did, she could, and she did)

Combine a very tall bike with a significant increase in weight over a scooter or an XR, and interesting things happen - if a Honda XR 125cc bike starts falling away from you while you're stood next to it, you swear and just pull it up straight again. The Versys is a different vat of guppies: if you let it lean too far, you'd better hope the side-stand is down, because if not, she's going down.

In the first week of owning the V, I had one full-on drop, and two very near-misses where I nearly pulled a muscle in my back trying to keep the damn thing up-right.

When riding it, it felt heavy to me, as if I was constantly fighting it. In fact, especially in the beginning, I think I was frightened of it - afraid I would drop it, afraid I'd fall over and get my leg trapped under it, afraid I'd end up causing an accident. But I kept at it.

Then, something happened...

Something started changing after a few weeks - I swear on my life that the bike started feeling lighter. Things that used to be heavy got lighter. Gaps in traffic which I couldn't get through became fewer. The roads got wider, the cars became less scary, and the space I needed to do U-turns decreased rapidly, and are now limited only by the turning radius of the bike at full lock on the steering.

At first, I thought there was something physically wrong with the bike. "Oh, perhaps it's because I'm running low on fuel", I deluded myself, "That's why it feels lighter". So I'd fill 'er up, and despite the extra 12kg of liquid sloshing around in the tank, the weight continued to be missing.

The other day, I found myself chucking the bike into tiny gaps in traffic, and it suddenly struck me that riding a bike was a lot like skiing. Some times you have to do something quite counter-intuitive to go in the direction you want. I'm not talking about counter-steering, either - it's about some times leaning with the bikes into tight corners, but other times letting the bike doing all the leaning while I stay upright, supermoto-style. It's about sometimes using brakes, other times using the engine, and other times again accelerating to keep your balance correctly.

It's a weird realisation, when you're dancing in and out of traffic around the Old Street roundabout in London, zipping between cars, taking gaps, diving in, rolling out, using the gas and a flick of the handlebars to pick the bike back up from a lean... As if the saddle is the most natural place to be.

I guess if a bike feels too heavy, it's more down to the rider than the bike itself...