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Monday to Sunday on a Friday - all work and all play makes Wesley Lum one happy boy!
Dare to make the pilgrimage to the Bike Friday factory in Eugene and you risk being cornered, photographed and grilled about your life history by a cloaked interrogator using Hanz Scholz signature welded implements ... here's the latest soul who came wandering up the hotmix path to take delivery of his Friday ...
"IT'S A SWEET RIDE. As good as my Sequoia. And I rode 15 bikes before selecting the Sequoia..."
Wesley Lum, Sacramento, CA, has just come in from test riding his brand new Friday along the duck-dotted Fern Ridge bike path. He's enthusing about the bike and his buddy Dick Wehe, 62, who steered him into our little-wheeled world.
"I've known Dick for 20 years. Done 3 tours together, biked to work together, and ride almost every weekend together. He's just retired and decided he wanted to be car-free. Since he bought his Crusoe, he doesn't ride his $3000 Steve Rex as much."
Holy helmet!
Now we don't expect people to rush off and eBay their garage full of bikes just because they join the Friday fold. In fact, many Bike Fridays do languish in their suitcases between jaunts to Provence, the Rockies, Alaska and Botswana. But an alarming number stay out of their suitcases and become their owner's primary bicycle. As in, "Now we've got our Campy Record 10 Pocket Rocket Pros we don't ride our [insert brand of carbon fiber dream machine here] anymore."
Perhaps it's due to simple factors, like the Bike Friday being more compact and easy shunt through your front door. For an über commuter like Wesley, these things matter.
"I biked to work every day since 1971, rain or shine, 10 miles each way - with only a two year break. Now I'm getting older and a little softer, I can still do it, but in combination with public transport. True intermodality!"
A self-proclaimed "uncivil" engineer, Wesley's work takes him all over the country and internationally, no doubt studying the various genres of road rage and how to prevent it.
"I work in planning and improving bikeways, lane design and safety ..."
But does the government really take into account the needs of cyclists when they plan new road systems, or do people like Wesley have to go in waving both crankarms and dinging their bicycle bells?
"I am not really in the advocacy arena, but to me, it's a matter of policy. You either provide for cyclists, or you don't. And we're lucky in Sacramento, Davis, and to a lesser degree San Francisco, where you can bike right out your door to where you want to do. Go east and there are some areas that are way too hard to bike." [The Galfromdownunder can vouch for that - I biked out the elevator from my digs in SF to the BART, Amtrak, to a Davis Bike Club meeting and all the way back again, pulling the TravelTrailer. Read about it.]
So what brought Wesley to join the fold, apart from keeping up with the Dick Wehe's?
"I wanted to enhance my business travel. It was the Customer Review section of the website sold me. So many people there wrote exactly what Dick said to me, that their Bike Friday rode just like a normal bike. It sounded like it really did live up to "Performance that Packs." And that amazing Jim Langely review on his Bicycle Aficionado website in particular - I mean, that guy's a legend, and if it's good enough for a legend ..." [Read more about Jim in the Bike Friday Desert Camp Report].
Wesley's biked in Beijing, where he borrowed a 3-speed; Japan, where he bought a bike for $10 to use for a few days after a business trip, and Holland.
Best of all, he wants to start co-lead, with Dick, a new Bike Friday Club of Sacramento. Keep an eye on the Bike Friday Club page for that one!
For more information, follow this link http://www.bikefriday.com/bf/carfree.