Bike Friday - the Reveal - Grampies on the Go - Again! Summer 2012

December 3, 2011

Bike Friday - the Reveal

We set off once again for Eugene, Oregon - the home of Green Gear, the makers of Bike Friday. Even though the excitement for us of going on the Blackball Ferry, arriving at Port Angeles and looking again at the bench we slept on at the ferry terminal in September, dining at McDonalds, and sleeping in the Green Gear parking lot in Eugene is no less, we will not mention it all here - again!

Suffice it to say that we drove late into the night to get to Eugene- one day early for our appointment with Walter, our Bike Friday sales rep. In the morning he found our van in front of the door and asked himself what day this was. Fortunately, our bikes had been ready for some time anyway. Out they came, festooned with zip strapped owners manuals and other stuff. Wow, at any age getting a new bike is a thrill!

Factory fresh. Our bikes came out festooned with owner's manual and manuals from each of the individual components. We had asked for them to be fully assembled, rather than boxed, but we kept the boxes too.

And yet they are very maneuverable. We know they will be way less nimble when loaded, but this is a good starting point.

We were pleased to find that with a couple of slight exceptions, the bikes were exactly as ordered and also came perfectly adjusted and ready to ride. The effects of customization are easy to see. Firstly, because Dodie prefers a more upright position, her handlebar tube is noticeably long. Since I prefer a more stretched out position, my whole frame is noticeably long. Then there are the other personal preferences - trigger shift for me, grip shift for Dodie; slightly curved bar for Dodie, straight for me; slightly lower gearing for Dodie, featuring the somewhat rare 26/36/46 front crank, and so forth.

Exception one was that instead of the ordered Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires there were Marathon Greenguards. A later email explained that the Plus tires would be shipped to us soon, free of charge.

The second, and more pesky thing was that the water bottle fittings had been put on such that only the smallest of bottles could be fitted, and then only with some acrobatics.

The fittings for this bottle holder are way too far forward. Even this smallest of bottles is a tough squeeze to get in. This was an unexpected custom bike making boo boo.

We didn't want to put our bikes through whatever surgical procedures might be needed to reposition the fittings, so we decided to just cope with it, somehow. At worst it means our water capacity is a little less than we had planned on, and we have little choice of water bottle styles.

In the showroom, we met James Cagney, who was just returning from a trip to Europe, including Sardinia. He was bring his tandem in for an overhaul. Bike Friday greet customers with "Welcome Home". It's quite fitting, since so many of their models are expected to travel far from Eugene.

James Cagney - gave us some good tips on what to do with suitcases and bags once arriving in Europe.

The showroom itself is a fun place to be. I guess any bike shop is, if you are a crazy guy, on a bike.

The Tikit has 16 inch wheels and is more easily foldable.

The next step was to take the bikes out on a run along the Willamette River. Eugene has a nice network of bike paths, and these run on both side of the river, with several bike bridges available. At least, that is what we saw on the excellent bike path map available at Bike Friday.

We set off and everything was swell until we noticed that there was an REI on our route. We stopped in, just for a minute, and when we "came to" it was already getting too dark to continue our ride!

One thing we bought at REI was an extra Yakima "top tube" - an adjustable rod that when extended from the seat to the handlebar can allow bikes without top tubes to be mounted on standard bike racks. However we soon found that with the Bike Fridays this method had the wheels riding way too low to the ground. We ended by hoisting both bikes way up on the rack, with the rack arms under the bottom of the frames. A lot of bungee cording later, we were ready to travel.

There has to be a way to get these things on!

The plan had been to spend another whole day along the Willamette, but for some reason we are feeling restless, and showed up in Montana - also a day early. At a rest stop along the way we encountered a "wide load" wider than anything we have ever seen. It occupies both lanes of the Interstate, so we assume that while it is travelling nothing moves faster than it does. There were at least a dozen "wide load" pickup trucks accompanying it, and scads of yellow clad workers. They did not want themselves or their trucks to be photographed, but did allow that the thing was headed for the tar sands on behalf of Imperial Oil. We were just glad we did not meet up with them while on our bikes. We also think about how light and innocent our bikes are, and how small and clean even the Bike Friday factory is, compared to this mammoth effort to extract the last grains of tar from the earth to fuel the dying carbon economy.

We would not want to meet this thing on the open road!

Once in Montana we took the bikes off the rack, to find that two spots on Dodie's stem had been ground to bare metal by some part of my bike. Oh no, the trauma of the first scratch on a new car, or bike! We cried and cried, and then headed off across town looking for touchup paint. It will never be quite the same, or course.

Here (in Montana) the temperatures are well below freezing. It means cycling is pretty much off the agenda. Still we periodically can put on our Polarfleeces and just go look at our Bike Fridays!

Montana is not too conducive to cycling right now.

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