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There are many reasons people buy a Bike Friday - world travel being a traditional one, recreation and commuting another. But with its signature low-stepover design, A Bike Friday also opens up a world of cycling to folks who are find traditional bicycle frames inconvenient or intimidating. Once they get their leg over a Bike Friday, there's no stopping them. This story was submitted for the 2007 Cycle Oregon BF Homecoming Story Contest. I MET my wife when we were both students at the Univeristy of California at Davis. Davis is a great bike town, everyone rides. I had a weird Soviet-bloc bike bought in Colombia, with a bunch of pieces from the various Russian satellites (red Polish tires!), while my wife rode a 70's English girl's bike. I loved to watch her ride, because there is really nothing so cool as a pretty girl on a bike. Years later, the college bikes were rusting away in the garage, and I got the idea that maybe my wife would like a new bike for Christmas. She only knew how to ride a girl's bike, with a step-through frame, so I figured that I needed to find something like that. I'd heard good things about the Fridays, and they have a low main tube, so I thought a Friday would be the perfect replacement for the old English tourer. I bought her a Pocket Nomad (at that time the least expensive stock Friday). She liked it. She started riding it to work. I had been riding my big-wheeled bike to work, but I was impressed enough with my wife's Friday to get of my own. I bought a cream soda-blue New World Tourist, which quickly became my main bike, both as a commuter and on the noon rides at work. The summer after I bought the NWT, I suggested that maybe we ought to take these little bikes on a tour. Like, maybe, to visit my brother in Lapland. Neither of us was much into camping or touring, but it seemed like a fun idea, so we took the bikes on a plane to Finland, rode around the south coast, and wound up with our bikes at the Arctic Circle. My wife says its the best summer she ever had. The next summer, we did a tour in Germany, also on the Fridays. And I got myself a Pocket Rocket Pro, because carrying 19 pounds down a train station stairway is a lot easier than carrying 28 pounds. Both of us ride to work. On average, we put around 4000 miles per year on the bikes, together. We haven't gotten rid of the car yet, but the Fridays are used at least as much as the car, which mostly sits in the driveway. The Fridays are great for this. We don't often fold them, but a short bike is much easier to take on a train, elevator, bus... This year (and this is where the BF Homecoming comes in) the idea is to take the bikes up the coast for a tour of Oregon. My mother-in-law grew up in Portland, aand neither of us has ever been there. So, yup. Ride the Friday in their home state. Cuddle up in a tent on the coast. Climb Mt. Hood. That would be fun. Or maybe we'll just continue to ride these little bikes to work, which is fun, too. Hei-hei. Noah Jacobs, noahj@well.com |