Thinking about Grasshoppers
Hi, thanks very much for your excellent review of the Grasshopper. I'm thinking seriously of getting one so it was very helpful. At the moment I'm riding a rare Brompton Recumbent which is fun and a good introduction to bents so after riding around 150 miles in three days with no pain I'm prospecting for a serious touring bike.
So I thought I'd ask if you were still enjoying it, whether it's usually OK in UK trains and whether you had managed to fly with it? I've used a (normal) Brompton for international travel a lot and I've also packed a Hase Pino Tandem for a long haul flight to and from India so I'm thinking it should be do-able.
Like you I'm sold on the Rohloff (we have one on the Pino) and I think my preferred spec would be very similar to yours, down to the Radical bags, although I think I would go for the cheaper and simpler Avid BB7 mechanical disk brakes. I've lived with Louise brakes and they haven't been completely easy.
Finally, I assume it was Bikefix you bought it from. One of my problems is that the two main UK dealers are Bikefix and Kinetics in Glasgow, and I've had mixed experience with both of them. Were Bikefix helpful and if you had any problems or special requirements did they deal with it well?
Thanks again for the report.