So I'm officially a Birdy owner now. Got my green Touring delivered in the weekend. I may have to get a Kermit sticker for it, since I've already called my other green bike Yoda.


R&M Birdy Touring by gunnsteinlye, on Flickr

Extras are front & rear racks, and dynamo lighting system. Sport stem and Ergon grips. For now I'm just tuning the ride position and testing out the gearing range, to see what parts need to be replaced. I'll probably replace the Marathon Racer tyres (40-355) with regular Marathon (44-355) for better puncture protection and a bit more volume. The dealer isn't used to these bikes, he had put the seatpost on backwards and the bars at a crazy angle, but once that was corrected the ride position was quite ok, if a little stretched still. I'll probably get bars with a bit more backsweep, which wouldn't work at all with the other stem. The ride is lively, my other bikes have more relaxed steering. At my weight the standard elastomers move quite a bit and give comfortable damping, just as I like it. The fold has one more step than the Tern I used to have, and is a little confusing at first, but is more compact I think and should work well once I'm used to it.

A little worrying is that neither wheel was completely settled into the dropouts, but a bit angled. I'd expect R&M to ship it folded with the wheels on, if so it was mounted wrong at the factory. Otherwise it's the dealers fault. Either of them should know better.

Gearing: It's got the regular 52t chainring. Rear it's got an XT derailer, and a special Sunrace hub & cassette combination that isn't compatible with anything else. The cassette is a 9-32t and 10-speed, and is used instead of Shimano's discontinued Capreo system. It shifts well enough, seems accurately adjusted. The tiny 9t cog means you get lots of high end gearing with a normal chainring, despite the small wheels. The 356% range goes from 2,1 to 7,4 gain ratio, a bit low range and high gearing for a touring bike, I'd say. Something like a 42t chainring would make more sense if touring someplace not flat. A dualdrive setup would give all the high and low end I could wish for. An Alfine 11 with 409% range might also be enough. I wish they'd sold it like that. The Nexus 8 they do offer just isn't enough, with it's 306% range.