Where Has My Tikit Gone?

No, thankfully it hasn't been lost or stolen. But where have I taken it? Let me count the ways...er, places:

1. On the Maryland Ride-on bus front rack.
2. On the Maryland Ride-on bus, covered, inside the bus!
3. On the Maryland Ride-on bus, uncovered, inside the bus!
4. Inside the library and parked under the table.
5. Inside the Safeway grocery store, down the aisles and through the checkout, wheeling along all the way!
6. Inside the office, parked under my desk. (Okay, very pedestrian when it comes to Tikits and Bromptons and the like. So sue me.)
7. Inside a sushi restaurant. This was the best. The staff wanted to check out the bike, so I ended up giving them a fold/unfold demo right there in the restaurant. They all rolled it around. One gentleman, possibly the owner or manager, was interested in folding bikes and had been doing a little digging around. I gave him several brand names to check out and dissuaded him from the "A-bike". Sorry, folks. I hate to discriminate against a fellow folding bike, but c'mon. Pee Wee Herman wouldn't be caught dead on one of those, not even in a darkened movie theater, doing...nevermind. This manager/owner was trying to show me via his laptop some brand he had seen that was from england. "Brompton?" I offered. "Strida?" Nope. He never could find the webpage where he had seen it, and I couldn't help as all his google search results were in Japanese!

Where it has not been:
1. To a bike shop. I've been able to dial in the shifting well enough with just the barrel connector, so the chain stays on the sprocket where you put it; no wall climbing down a gear or bungee jumping up a gear. The shifter is still tight--it takes effort to downshift (move to a larger sprocket) but I'm used to it now. At some point I will see if I can loosen it up. I don't know if the cable just needs some more slack, or what. I don't think there is friction because it shifts pretty smoothly. It just takes a little muscle to get it to the next index point on the shifter. Shifting up is still tight but much easier with gravity on your side.

I have found the Tikit to get more comments than my Pocket Crusoe, and that's cool. The Crusoe is generally my higher-speed, free-time bike for trail rides and zooming around the city for exercise or longer distance destinations like going across town. So I am happy to be off to the races on that bike. (Why is cross town always so much farther than going downtown or uptown? It's a good thing Billy Joel didn't fall in love with a crosstown girl. They'd have never seen each other!) The Tikit is the attention gravity point. People get sucked into its event horizon and I strike up lots of conversations. It's great fun, even at 05:30 when I catch the bus. That's all folks. Whatever your ride, ride it!