Hey Dumbo ... here's your tikit to fly

SCREEEEEEECH!

The tikitTM continues to wing its way from closet to cafe, bus stop to boardroom, pied-a-terre to patisserie, and is now lookee here, it's equator-hopping to dance with elephants. Just look at that grounded Dumbo there, thinking, if I had one of those bikes I really could fly - because of course it packs in a suitcase, just like a Bike Friday should. Read about Alvin Lee's Asiatic escapades with his nori green tikit; he's even taken it off-road in Cambodia. Someone stop that man before he base-jumps it off Everest and voids his frame warranty!

Is the tikit a truly trusty commuting companion? Our Customer Evangelist put it to the test in the land of the snarkiest security guards ... New York City. She dressed to impress, made appointments with customers and insiders who worked in those buildings then attempted to take it inside ... right up to where the sun don't shine on the nnnth floor. It's a Michael Mooreish experiment except unlike Mike, she was a li'l timorous of poking her li'l digi camera directly in the faces of the Men in Black, perhaps 'cos one told her (in not so many words), 'you take muh pitcha ah breaka yr face'. Read the full tikit On Trial multimedia report here.

The $550 tikit (or best offer). Eric B made a pilgrimage to Eugene to buy a nice green tikit from us, and while doing business back at UC Berkeley, locked it up outside. All together now ... what is wrong with this picture?

"But it was there for only 3 hours," he lamented. Screeeeech! 3 hours, you might as well have left it there for three months, dear boy. BF Research Labs didn't spend a ton of money developing a tiny folder just so you can lock it up outside with the discarded shopping carts and muzzled Alsations. But Eric was lucky ... thanks to the Power of the Fold, the word went out on every Bay Area listserve known to pedalin' padre. Blogs were ablaze with tactical titter about the whys and whereabouts of the liberated tikit. So much so, when it appeared a few days later on Craigslist for the pauperly sum of $550, the hapless poster was inundated with emails informing him of the unholiness of his acquisition. To cut a long blog short, it is now back in the hands of an older and wiser Eric. Read the case study here and Eric, ignore Strong Bad's timely advice about locking up on college campuses from now on ...

Now, I'd never claim that one bike brand is better than another. Different strokers for different stokers. BUT do you think for a moment that a [insert popular bike brand name here] bike would have been recovered as fast? With as much zeal? Would anyone have given two deafening hoots of an Air Zound horn? Precisely. We've got fans so rabid, they've already started their own tikit blogs (Vik's ripe for some intervention - perhaps we can prescribe him a non-folding Family Tandem). Yesssssir, buy a Friday and join the cult, sorry, family ...

Henry Ford would have approved ... if he'd been into bicycling rather than gas gluttony. The new Model T tikit was unveiled at the Dec '07 VeloSport launch in Berkeley. It's a sub-$1000 folder with a more "leisurely" fold - OK, it's 10 seconds slower. It involves a twiddly knob to release and tighten the stem, rather than that wowee magic cable mechanism that enables the 5 second (on a slow day) "hyperfold". Admittedly, the latter has, up until now, empowered the BF marketing busybees to say impressive things like "The World's Fastest Fold with the Famous Friday Ride." But many you don't care. Maybe you just wanna fold it and save $300 toward a fancy business suit.

Like Henry's big black precursor to the SUV, we think it's the bike that will get every commuter out of their bucket seat and into a saddle. As as Henry said: people can have the Model T in any colour - so long as it's black. A perfect folding fashion statement for NYC, no?

Email Fred's perch at blog@bikefriday.com