Originally Posted by
teamcompi
How good are these folding bikes for going the distance?
I am an avid rider with a number of different bikes and am lucky in that I can switch around between the tandems, 29er, touring, bent and mountain bike with no real problems. I am looking for some sort of bike I can ride while traveling. My rides will be between 20 to 30 kms up to about 150-200 km per ride, just packing the ususal stuff in a seat bag and a camera sort of stuff. I really do not mind spending 10-20 minutes putting things together.
My question is should I get a convential road type bike with S&S couplers, or maybe a BF pocket rocket? or? My main concern is I want to be able to fit it in one suitcase that is airline legal, for weight and size.
One thing that might be a problem is I am not tiny guy, I am 6'2", and on a good day tip the scales at 250 pounds, I have no problems riding from one cookie joint to the next....
For traveling with disregard of the fold, it's hard to beat the Ritchey break-away bikes. You don't seem to sacrifice any performance with those bikes. Dahon has a couple cheaper knockoffs using a similar system. They have video of a woman packing a Ritchey into a suitcase on their website (
www.ritcheylogic.com). Bike Friday's beefiest bike tops out at about a 230lb rider limit. Skip the folders since that's not a priority. Most of them seem to top out at a 230lb rider.