If you're a loyal reader of MM, then you know I've recently moved to
New York from Chicago and you also know that I had my things sent to me
from storage in the last month or so. Among the things I was really
happy to see after five months apart was my trusty bike. Man, I love my
bike. I just bought it about a year ago, but I put some serious miles
on that thing before I moved. In Chicago it's so easy to get around on
a bike — from April to November, that is — so I rode my bike everywhere. Not only was it economical, but it was awesome exercise and it lifted my 30-year-old butt about 3 inches higher.
So,
you might expect that I was really looking forward to getting back on my
bike now that the weather is nice in New York. I knew it wouldn't be
the same as riding around in Chicago, but I'm just a few blocks from
Central Park and a few blocks from the river, so I was excited about
the biking I'd do there. But then the awful happened: I realized that my
stairs are too steep and my bike is too heavy and big to carry from my
apartment down to the street. Without any storage at all or any safe
place to lock it up, there's really no practical way I can ride my
bike. After my day of heartbreak, I've started thinking of other
options: I could just ride my bike 24-hours a day and never carry back
up the stairs, I could pay 30 bucks a day to store it in a garage 2 miles
away, or I could look for a folding bike. The latter seems the most
practical solution, so I've started my search. So far, the Dahon
Espresso is my favorite. Looking at it in the photo above, you'd never
guess it could fold up like this:
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