Presto Jubilee

[sam]

This is a Dahon Presto Lite. It's my London bike, because it can fold into rush hour trains. It's under a spoiler so as not to spoil the suspense.

Spoiler

[close]

The problem
When riding this I wear a backpack. It gets heavy because I fill it up. My back suffers.

The solution
Don't fill it up.

The solution
Of course I'm going to fill it up. A half empty bag taunts you until you do.

I needed a bag small enough that I wouldn't mind carrying it around, but large enough to be useful; preferably one which attached to the bike. The best bag is also one which goes on and comes off quickly. Who wants to be messing with velcro straps when there are precious seconds at stake? (Folders get you thinking in terms of seconds. Check out the advertising.) Nor did I want to waste bag space on the lock.

The saddlebag I use on my full-size bikes looked ideal. I could have clipped it to the top of the seatpost, but that would have messed with the folder's low centre of gravity. Needing a second seatpost of sorts, I got a pipe from Homebase and had them cut it in different lengths for me to play around with. Then I wedged the pipe into the frame like so and strapped it tight with jubilee clips.

[Kenjaja]

1) If the attached downtube is open at the bottom as it is at the top then I would describe this as engineering genius. If the tube is not open at then bottom the it will fill up as soon as it rains and you will be carrying a tubefull of extra weight (emergency bidon perhaps?).
2) Are the attachments an American's way of celebrating the Queens 60th anniversary on the throne?

[sam]

The tube is open at the bottom. However, when I looked through it to take this picture, I saw the Queen looking back at me:



an optical illusion, or a peek into another dimension?

[Kenjaja]

Classic timely and timeless: Rolf Harris, Lucian Freud et al can eat their hearts out.

[sam]

Admittedly it didn't capture the Queen's "strong sense of duty and Hanoverian roots". On the other hand, I think this is how Churchill saw her. In fact, if you look more closely...

[sam]

Feeling more untethered than usual, and perplexed why adjustments to the handlebar post locking mechanism were having no great effect, it finally occurred to me to look more closely at the hinge.



A crack may be how the light gets in, as Leonard Cohen sang, but any poetry in motion was eventually going to lead to a(nother) hard lesson in physics. Fortunately Dahon spares aren't the hens teeth they used to be, and a replacement is on the way.

I need a folder for my city cycling to get past the integrated transport police. Although the prospect of shopping for another bike was in theory not unpleasant, current offerings do not appeal, chunky clunkiness apparently being the reigning aesthetic. Not much poetry.

[Kenjaja]

Your exposure to the (true) English language is obviously having an effect. i.e. "Technically not supposed to be there".

Wouldn't the American English phrase be "SNAFU"? Or is that just US military?

[sam]

and civilian counterparts

[sam]

The solution
Don't fill it up.
Get used to it. The backpack works too well to take refuge in nifty solutions.



That's the Serpentine. The life preserver is part of a game – you're meant to try to throw it over people caught bathing. You win a prize.