Bike Friday

Customized BF

Bike Friday is a brand of folding bicycle made by Green Gear Cycling of Eugene, Oregon, United States. Cyclists often refer informally to the company as Bike Friday.^{[citation needed]}

Hardware

The Bike Friday emphasizes riding characteristics rather than foldability. It packs into a suitcase and "rides like your best bike" according to Ed Pavelka, former senior editor of Bicycling magazine. The company's co-founders and designers hail from a racing background, rather than a traditional engineering background. The company history says they sought to invent a packable bicycle that rode well over serious distances, loaded or unloaded, to save airline baggage fees.

The range includes tandems, triplets, road, mountain and touring models, a recumbent, and a tandem that breaks apart and becomes a single bike. All fit in one or two towable standard suitcases.

Opinions

Cyclists owning a Bike Friday include broadcaster Phil Liggett, Race Across America champ Lon Haldeman, and Heinz Stücke.^{[citation needed]} The Folding Society's Buyer's Guide describes it as: "A high performance bike that folds. The sales pitch is that it rides as well as your best bike (aiming it by implication at the existing cycling enthusiast who feels a need for a folder), and this is quite a fair description.... Folding is not as easy as some of the others, and it is rather bulky when folded."^[1] Other member reports at the Folding Society seem to concur, both that it "really is a very good high performance bicycle," but that it "isn't the most convenient or easiest folder."

The same company's Tikit bike addresses the market segment more interested in a convenient, easy fold and less interested in high performance.

References

1. ^ Richard Ballantine (2001), Richard's 21st-Century Bicycle Book, Overlook Press, ISBN 1-58567-112-6
2. ^  The Folding Society, Buyer's Guide
3. ^  Folding bike comparison chart

External links

• Green Gear Cycling, Inc. (official website)