Last week I bought a used folding bike by Bike Friday called a Tikit (the hyperfold version, Tikit2Ride). I was a little surprised that they allowed me to purchase the demo bike, but that was fine with me. It saved me a couple hundred dollars and weeks of waiting.
It looks pretty small next to my other bikes, but it actually rides like a regular bike. The steering is a little twitchy and will probably be something that I’ll have to get used to. I replaced the saddle that came with the bike, since it was oh so manly (it had a leopard stripe down the center), with the seatpost and saddle that came with my Cannondale Synapse road bike. The seatpost diameter used by the Tikit and my road bike are identical; the Tikit uses a shim to work with 27.2mm seatposts. The bike was a demo at the bike shop and the leopard striped saddle was whatever it had on it when I purchased it. This past weekend, my dad came to help my brother move and to test ride folding bikes at some local bike shops. He tested two models of Dahon folding bikes with 20″ wheels and seemed to like them, but he was more interested in bikes with 16″ wheels and non of the stores seemed to have any. He liked my bike the best of the bikes he test rode.
One of these days, I’ll get up early enough to attempt my 20 mile commute to work on one of my bikes. Thursday would be the perfect day to attempt it (high of 20 C). I’m entertaining the idea of taking the Marc train from Jessup to Greenbelt and just biking to and from the Marc stations. I have a folding bike, so I can take the bike on the train now.
Since I want to do my part to stimulate the economy, I won a bunch of bids on ebay for random parts that I can use to upgrade the components on the Tikit. Eventually, when everything is done, I’ll have: a new bottom bracket and crankset (SRAM Rival), a different saddle (Specialized Toupe Gel), a new seatpost (Thomson Masterpiece), a new rear derailleur (SRAM X.9), new shifters (SRAM X.9 for now), a new cassette (11-32t 9spd) and a new rear wheel (SRAM Dual Drive hub). It was pretty fun bidding for stuff on ebay. The only real way to win those stupid auctions is to bid at the last minute, or bid reasonably high for something. I don’t even know why they have auctions that last for a week. Hopefully I can figure out how to install all this stuff; my only fear is the bottom bracket stuff (removing the sealed bearings bottom bracket and installing the external bearings bottom bracket), but honestly, it can’t be that hard. Maybe the new parts will lighten the bike by a considerable amount. I’ll weigh it before and after the replacements.
