Seems that you have made up your mind on the Brompton. For what it's worth, we will be taking ours to Maui next spring and are looking forward to it. We don't plan to ride to Hana or anything like that, but on the other hand, we will not be renting a car during our 8 night trip.

Also for what it's worth we have found the ride satisfactory, for example, for a 40 mile day of riding in Portland last weekend (Amtrak down and Boltbus back to Seattle) and a 35 mile day of riding in Vancouver BC (Amtrak both ways) the weekend before that. We put the black cloaks on and rolled into the Fairmont for a too expensive treat of a couple of glasses of wine and an appetizer after riding directly from a nice picnic out at Jericho Beach and a trip around Stanley Park earlier in the day. We got the bikes specifically to enhance travel.

As for gearing I have found it satisfactory but we ride the Bromptons differently than our tandem. The tandem has a triple in front and 12-27 10 cog ultegra cassette in the rear. We ride in a very narrow cadence range on the tandem and the steps between gears are small and I shift very frequently. On the Bromptons, cadence varies more but the the steps between gears are uniform and the overall range works great. We have the 6 -speed reduced gearing so our range is 29.1-88 gear inches vs the tandem which ranges from 29.7-115.9. It is just a different kind of riding that we enjoy as much - we tend to coast down hills on the Bromptons. We do the bike short thing with the tandem but wear street clothes on the Brommies.

But back to your question - I think the Bike Friday might be a nice option for you if standard parts are a requirement and you want to be able to get down to a compact package.