As mentioned in the last segment of my holiday challenge to ride each of my six* bikes 50km over the holidays, *I bought a seventh mid-challenge so I took it out on New Years Day.
Now, I only bought it on December 30th, and it was built up but never ridden by the previous owner. Not even one ride, and it sat for a couple years since too. So this was a rather ambitious idea to ride it over 50km as a shakedown ride for the previous owner’s build. But I put my trust in him, and off we went. I did, however, choose a route that never strayed too far from the Skytrain.
The route I had in mind basically followed the Central Valley Greenway out, and looped around New West to the PC Parkway back. It’s about a 42km loop, so some extra spurs were in order. I originally meant to do this route with the Twenty on day one of the challenge, but I made an on-the-fly decision to go visit the old hospital grounds in Coquitlam instead on that ride.
To get those extra kilometres in, I detoured a bit south to Deer Lake, and then back up to the Burnaby Lake gravel trails. The Bike Friday as you see it here is almost exactly as-purchased, all I added was the Jones bar, pedals, basket, and bags. It came with Schwalbe Black Jack tires which are quite knobby but surprisingly low resistance on pavement.
Also, unlike the Wombat ride, my fenderlessness was not a problem today! This whole past week was remarkable in weather – rarely rained and stayed really mild. Alarming but also enjoyable.
And I have to say, the bike has been performing flawlessly. The cheap disc brakes were fine, the Deerhead friction-shifted Campy derailleurs shifted great and looked the part too.
The bike generally rides really well, and riding it over 50km was no problem at all. It rides much more like a regular bike than the Brompton, for example. The bottom bracket on this model is particularly high, maybe that helps?
As I write this in late April 2025, this bike has undergone some accessorizing: Velo Orange fenders, a different bar and stem, and a Brompton carrier block welded on the front with the racks removed. Otherwise it’s unchanged from how the previous owner built it, and it has a little over 500km on it so far.
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