First impressions:
No chance to ride it yet, took my tools out and went over the bike. It came folded in the Citizen bike bag - a nice heavy duty bag in which I carried the bike home from the train, a six minute walk. Once home I took out the bike, unfolded it and tried to put it together.
My first oh oh moment came as I unfolded the handle, locked it into place and felt a lot of play. I remembered all the posts about folding bikes having play in the stem, then I noticed I had not latched the QR down. All slop gone!
I felt better about not test riding the bike once I noticed that one pedal was just about to fall off.
The Shimano derrailer needed a couple of turns to the phillips head adjustment screw to get it silent, a quick adjustment even for a newbie like me. The Revoshift falls into gears smartly.
Some things became clear that I had somehow missed from reading about the bike online. For one thing, it does have a secondary spring loaded latch mechanism in the main hinge, it also has a similar secondary device on the hinge for the folding stem. The black rims have their breaking surfaces machined for a very nice visual contrast, I wonder if other makers do this and how does this affect brake pad wear and performance.
The main hinge QR looks a lot beafier in person than in the website pics. If I'm able to convince myself to ride in to work tomorrow, I will post about actual on-road performance.
Maybe after reading all the posts here my expectations were low, but I have to say the bike looks very very nice.
Last edited by OrangeJoe; 03-24-11 at 10:25 PM.