Yeah, it's a people thing I guess... when I was shopping, my guy seemed to get more and more lax with the discounts and small freebies as we chatted, he got to know me, and know he had a sale.

I haven't cracked the air travel thing with a bike yet. If I'm coughing up for flights, my wife is likely with me, and she's not a serious rider - don't think she'll appreciate me disappearing for rides. We like the bike sharing programs in major cities though - enough to do some local sight-seeing, cheap, and low hassle/worry.

I'm also an ultra-light/ultra-compact self-supported tourer on the Brompton (via train/bus/ferry/car), so an air travel case would ruin that... what do you do with the case while touring? I also prefer one-way touring vs looping/doubling back to retrieve a stored travel case. When and if I start doing air travel bike tours, I'm going to dumpster dive for recycle cardboard boxes, cut/make my own sub-62" bike boxes with packing tape and newspaper padding, and toss it all back in recycle at the destination....repeat for each leg. If I had to buy a travel case though, I suppose I'd go for protective hard case like the B&W - probikekit seems selling them for $200 (but no experience).

The Brompton Mafia guys carry-on with Southwest Airlines - they are very lenient. Not sure I want to chance that out of JFK and international carry-on sizing tends to be even stricter. I won't trust it to a Gorilla handler without boxing.

I think you mentioned touring somewhere so for dealer accessories, my favorites are Ergon GP2 (or 3 with S bars) grips, -12% gearing, X-Roller, nylon zip cover, T-bag w/block, ABUS bordo 6000 combo lock, and internal frame tool kit. But check prices, you probably still do better online, than 10% dealer disc.

Good luck.