Bike Friday? Anyone?

[Kerry1976]

My BF NWT should be delivered sometime around the middle of July!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hulagirl]

EEEEEKKKK!!!! So happy for you!

[Tri Girl]

my bf nwt should be delivered sometime around the middle of july!!!!!!!!!!!! :d

yay!!!!!

[hulagirl]

We got 'em! Ketchup and Mustard have been unboxed, set up and ridden. They are quite fun and cute! And although they ARE funny to look at, they ride just like a regular bike!

The strangest part was that I gave them my Orbea Race bike measurements and when I got on Ketchup for the first time, it was like getting on my Orbea! I was ready to go into my aero bars!

I will say this FULL WARNING! DO NOT attempt to unbox/build your Bike Friday after a red-eye flight, travel, totally tired & loopy day. It was frustrating. Our biggest issues were with centering the brakes. As tired as we were, it took us way too long to figure it out. And then I couldn't find my seat post and almost had a break down. It was still in the box. LOL!

We are going to take both bikes to a local bike shop to just have a few last things tweaked. Shifting is a little odd on Mustard, and I dropped my chain for the first time ever on a bike within 3 minutes of riding Ketchup. And we want to make sure things are tight enough, etc.

Super fun bikes! I'll get pictures up later - right now we are a little behind on work as we spent many hours yesterday setting up the new Bike Fridays.

Denise

[Tri Girl]

yay!!! Can't wait to see pics of them!!!

[Kerry1976]

Can't wait to see pics!

[emily_in_nc]

Alright! I am so excited for you! Hopefully all the little things can be tweaked. I suspect so.

My DH just changed out my blue bar tape for red on my (white) Pocket Crusoe tonight. It was the original bar tape and was getting all torn up and pulling apart on the top of the bars. The red really POPS -- makes me feel like I have a whole new bike! Since I have red bags and accents on my bike, it was a good choice. And I'm sure it will make me faster, right!? ;-)

Can't WAIT to see your photos. How fun!!

[emily_in_nc]

I'll get pictures up later - right now we are a little behind on work as we spent many hours yesterday setting up the new Bike Fridays.

Denise

Denise, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are seriously negligent in your picture posting. Don't you know that we have rigorous standards around here?



We want to see Ketchup and Mustard. Soon. Post pictures by the end of the week and no one will get hurt. Or fined for non-compliance.

[hulagirl]

I suck! I'm sooo sorry! I've been having wayyyy too much fun on this thing!

Basically, I've ridden my Pocket Crusoe every single day since we got it. Except yesterday - when I had to do a 4 mile run for training and was just too dang tired to ride.

We are staying in West Seattle on the beach so any ride other than to the water taxi is up a 400' elevation gain in 1.5 miles. I was dreading this hill at first - expecting my gearing on Ketchup to be similar to the gearing on Serafina (my Orbea Road bike). I was sooo wrong! Dave at BF listened to my concerns about hills and set me up with excellent gears to hit the hills. I started up the hill and was shocked to discover that I had 3 more (maybe it was 4) easy gears to shift down to! Wow. Seriously awesome.

Unfortunately, the closest bike shop wasn't very helpful to us. Not only did they tell us it would take a week for them to look over our bikes and make sure we built it correctly, but they sold us 451 tubes for 406 tires. This will be important later for sure.

Hubby has had some issues getting used to shifting. He's got a Big Dummy at home and is used to grip shifters and thumb shifters so the SRAM double taps were giving him problems. Especially on the front cog. I had no problem with it. But he's getting much better with it.

Regardless we still wanted someone to check 'em over and help put on the fenders. (As we are staying in an office, we are limited to tools to do this stuff) So we took the bikes down to another shop about 5 miles from our place. On the way, hubby got a flat. But we were fine as we had new tubes! THAT WERE THE WRONG SIZE. Ugh. Broke a tire level getting the tire off and discovered that my patch kit is a piece of crap with one tube of the glue having burst a long time ago and the other tube refusing to open. We barely patched the tire well enough to get us to the shop within 10 min of them closing. Luckily they were cool enough to stay later and do all the work for us.

We took the bikes back to them the next day to get slime in our tires and our back gearing soaked in oil. That makes the bike spin ultra quiet. Now we have stealth Bike Friday's! ;-)

We've been to the Seattle REI numerous times and we each have Ortlieb panniers on our back racks (matching colors of course). We use the water taxi and bike lanes of Seattle to get around so easily.

So how do they ride? Well, really I can say they ride JUST like a regular sized bike. I can't tell the difference AT ALL unless I go to make a sharp turn. (They turn on a dime) I've got my Speed Play pedals on and when I'm clipped in - the bike flies! I do wish I had a slightly smaller gear as I've bottomed out while going downhill. But if I had to pick one, I'd keep my bigger gears for hitting the uphills.

On the bikes, I can't see why everyone looks at us so funny. Off the bikes, they look like circus bikes! But they ride so well.

We've ordered Schwalbe Marathon Supreme tires. A litte wider and highly rated by users. We've also got slime in our tubes! Finally get to use it with the lower PSI.

Photos coming! I'm working on them now.

Denise

[hulagirl]

Here they are! They aren't that great as we are just too giddy when we ride them to actually stop and take pictures of them. ;-)

Ketchup - Naked! (This is right out of the box, fresh!)


Dressed and together with Mean Mr. Mustard:


We also have front racks, but only need the back racks for now with the fenders. In this shot I have the SpeedPlay pedal covers on the pedals. They are super easy to put on so that I can ride in normal shoes if I want to just tool around the town.

[Kerry1976]

Absolutely lovely bikes. Sounds like you have really been using and enjoying them - and doing the extras to really make them work just for you.

The pair together looks so awesome!

My NWT should arrive in the next 3-4 weeks! Can't wait!