My new pet peeve is flashy demonstrations of folding bikes.
Pet peeves creep up on you. You never see or hear something for the first time, and think, Now that’s going to become a pet peeve. More likely, it’s after a number of occurrences when you realize that you’ve acquired a new pet peeve.
It was a couple of months ago, when watching this video of a Dahon Vector X27h Folding bike, when I realized I was bugged.
I complained.
I’m familiar with the right way to fold a Dahon, I said. And in the video the fold sequence is done wrong, solely for the sake of flash. It’s a bike, not a party trick, I cried–typed, that is.
The guy in the video, Peter from NYCeWheels actually replied and apologized–apologized–explaining that his habits from Brompton folding bikes steered him astray from the proper Dahon folding sequence.
On top of that, the next time he did a Dahon video, peter made sure I knew that he got the fold right.
I felt like a jerk for picking on such a nice and responsive guy. But by then the pet peeve had set in.
We had access to three different folding bikes sent to us for review, plus my own Dahon. I decided to demonstrate how to fold each of these bikes, with no flash or showmanship whatsoever–the way the average user of would.
We’ve already reviewed and glorified the Brompton.
In the near future we will review the Bike Friday Tikit, and the Strida LT. Then we’ll follow up with some thoughts on how to evaluate which folding bike–if any–might be right for your commute.
Spoiler: It will have little to do with the time it takes to fold the bike.
Modestly Rude by Rockit_Dogg is licensed under a Attribution (3.0).