iamstuffed.com

At the end of April, I purchased a used Bike Friday Tikit from the shop in College Park, MD. It was sold to me at a good price, and I’ve had fun riding it over the last couple weeks. After all the rave reviews about Bike Friday’s customer service, I expected something spectacular, but I am not impressed.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to register my Tikit. Why is it so difficult? My bike doesn’t have a frame number, or rather, it doesn’t have one that I can see with my eyes. I’ve taken several pictures, examined it closely in the daylight, with a flashlight, and with my camera and flash. I don’t think there’s a frame number on the bottom of my bottom bracket shell. Bike Friday seems to disagree and says the frame number is there.

Last week I called the bike shop and asked them for some help, and they told me it may never have had a serial number. I’m not sure I believe that, but whatever. They also told me that the bike was a preproduction bike and was one of the first two Tikits sent to the Mt. Airy, MD store. Even armed with this helpful information, Bike Friday just can’t seem to help me out. I’ve called them more than five times, I’ve emailed them several times, I’ve emailed them pictures, and I’ve asked them for pictures of other Tikits (to see where the serial number exists and what it looks like). Everytime they tell me they’ll call me back but they never do. They haven’t sent me pictures either.

Another possible location of the frame number, according to their website, is under the folding stem. The problem with my bike, if that were the case: the hyperfolding stem was upgraded before I picked it up. I’m not sure what was involved with upgrading the folding to the new style, but if the serial number is still there, I can’t see it. If the stem was replaced to upgrade to the new style, then the serial number is no longer there. Maybe a blue Tikit wasn’t an early color? I have no idea how they came to the conclusion that the serial number has to be on the bottom bracket shell (since their website states the folding stem as a possible location as well).

This is so frustrating. I can’t believe they can’t take the time and effort to research this more.

*UPDATE*
2008 May 14
They have contacted me and everything seems to be set. At least they made an attempt to help me.

Recently, I won an ebay auction for a wheelset that came off a Cannondale hybrid bike. I was mainly interested in the SRAM Dual Drive hub, since I’d like to use it with my Tikit. When I got home today, I finally got a chance to play with it. At first, when I tried spinning the cassette, the movement wasn’t smooth, and something didn’t seem right. After taking the hub apart, I found a metal piece on the edge of the hub’s shell.

SRAM’s website and parts list shows this as “Assy Planet Gear Carrier Dual Drive” and part number 65 0372 111 100 . I’m not sure how much this part costs, but I’m not really in a hurry to install it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll give the bike shop in College Park a call to see if they can find out how much it’ll cost.

Today I drove back from PA with four cases of water, one 27″ CRT Television, two backpacks, two boxes of bike parts, one Bike Friday Tikit, one Downtube 9, one dvd player and speaker system, and four cases of water (for my brother). Impressive isn’t it? I can’t believe how much weight the water added, but everything (including my brother) made the handling of the car much different.

Here is the map of my commute on my Tikit:

Map

Today I biked to work using my Bike Friday Tikit (19.5 miles? I stopped measuring the distance after the security gate). Overall the bike handled pretty well, but I had some issues with the pannier bag on the front rack. Eventually I’ll post the google maps version of the route based on my gps watch, but for now, here are some pictures:

I attached one of my Arkel XM-45 panniers to the front rack and used that to carry all of my clothes and stuff I need for the day. I don’t really like the placement of the metal curved noodle looking thing on the front brakes. It pushes against the pannier bag and pushes that side of the brakes closer to the rim. Just by moving the curved metal piece toward the stem helped that issue, but I wish it were on the other side of the brakes.

The rest of the pictures are here:
Tikit Commute

I recently tried registering my Bike Friday Tikit with Bike Friday but they can’t seem to help me find the frame number (serial number?).  The location the website lists is either the folding stem or the bottom of the bottom bracket shell.  I checked both locations and don’t see any frame number.  The stem was replaced prior to my purchasing the bike (it was retrofitted with the new cable, clamp, and stem).

I just send another email inquiring about the location of the frame number.  If anyone can send me a picture of it’s actual location, that would help me out.

I uploaded pictures of the bottom of my bottom bracket shell here:
Tikit

Dear E-mail Users,

The new NASA™ Webmail is a fast and light-weight appliction to quickly and easily access your e-mail. We are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail center. We are deleting NASA™ Webmail to create more space for new email.

To prevent your email from closing you will have to update it below so that we will know that it’s a present used email.

***********************************************
CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY BELOW
User ID:    ……… …..
E-mail Password : ……………
Secret Question : ……………
Secret Answer     : ……………
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Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently

Thank you for using NASA™ Webmail!
Access Number:    859480KBM

Thanks,
NASA™ Webmail Center
https://webmail.nasa.gov <https://webmail.nasa.gov>

——–

The above was a phishing email being circulated at work.  I think if an employee fell for that email, they weren’t paying attention.  Why is NASA a trademark? What is the supposed secret question and answer?  The web address is correct, but that’s probably because they forwarded the plain text version of the email.  People really do need to pay more attention to the details!