Happy Holidays To My Fellow Folder Fans!-With A New Twist This Year
 

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=229536I decided to post a Happy Holidays Greeting a bit early this year because of an recent unexpected development involving my own folding bicycles. In the early morning hours of last Thursday, we had a huge hurricane strength windstorm blowing through Southern California. I was in one of the hardest hit areas of Los Angeles. We had trees falling down all over my neighborhood power pole supported by just the wires at many street intersections. They blocked many streets and made them mostly impassable except by bike or motorcycle. My 2 bicycles (the Brompton & the Raleigh Twenty) were pressed into action as per the primary reason why I bought them in the first place. When the winds died down enough to safely ride and the sun rose, I took my heavy duty “tank” bike-the Raleigh Twenty-out to see what was going on in the neighborhood (no contact from the outside was possible). We lost power and did not get it back for 2 days-so no radio (except for my sister’s car one), television, or Internet access. We were able to still use our 1960s era land line phone though. Later, I had to go farther out to a neighboring city several miles away to access the ATM machines there. The Brompton was an excellent choice for that trip being lightweight, speedy, and able to be bagged with ease and taken aboard an MTA bus for the return trip home.

There is still the matter of my neighbor’s tree. My neighbor’s sheared off tree top (the twin to my own approximately 90 foot tree I had removed a couple of years ago-thank God for good timing) is now dangling right on the power line. It can come down at any time on the shared driveway and walkway of our house. So the Department of Water and Power placed 2 traffic cones on the driveway/walkway. As of this writing, the branches have not been taken down yet. In spite of this, I do consider myself lucky that the house (except for 2 tiles) was not damaged and no one here was hurt.

So I want to wish all of you a sincere :)Happy Holidays:) from myself. This has been a very good year for me. With the addition of another vintage collapsible (more accurately, a separating/breakaway frame this time over another folding frame) small wheel bike purchased recently will insure that I will be able to handle any unexpected emergency, natural or man made that comes my way. Some of you have been critical of my choices and decisions concerning the previous purging of the Dahons and selection of my present bikes. With what happened last week, I am even more proud and far more resolved of the choices made for certain types of bikes that are hardware store repairable and built extra tough. I am looking more locally for most-all my cycling needs and future bicycles rather than ordering online from now on. I will let the experts from my favorite local bike shop handle that whenever and even if needed. The couple of days offline taught me how much I missed the quiet of decision making-not endless chatter many times becoming more frequent now erupting into flaming and name calling. A city-or region rather-this size easily has everything I need for bicycles of any age or style as it always had even before the Internet was adopted by the masses of bored anonymous users-idle hands definitely are the Devil's workshop. And was mostly abandoned & surrendered by the academic groups I used to work/communicate with during the 1990s.