My Dahon Curve D3

I'm writing yet again about my Dahon Curve D3, a bike I've owned for over 3 years. My wife and friends will tell you that bikes come and go in my life, so any bike that's stuck around this long must have something going for it. And the Dahon does. It's fun, compact, useful, red, and it has got a lot of good memories of wonderful trips associated with its tough little frame.

I got my Dahon in September of 2007. At the time the list price on a Curve D3 was $395 and Eric as Folding Bikes West sold me this 2006 D3 for a bit less than that. It turned out to be a wonderful deal for me and good deal for Eric, since two of my friends went on to buy their Curves from Eric after having a chance to ride mine. My friend Dave not only bought a Curve, but later went on to buy a Brompton from Eric as well. Dave has let my wife borrow his Curve for a couple of trips we've taken (one to Roslyn WA and the other to Lopez Island) and while Dave, like virtually all Brompton owners, raves about his machine, he has so far refused to sell me his Dahon Curve. I think that says something about the quality of this little machine.

My own Dahon Curve seems to have Brompton-proofed me. While a Brompton is even more compact (the Brompton basically folds in thirds while the Dahon folds in half), my Dahon folds quickly into a package that I can wrap in an IKEA bag and pop on a bus or train or hide under a table. And while Bromptons do have a well-deserved world-class reputation for quality, my Dahon has been the most trouble-free bike I've ever owned. The only real problem I've had with the machine was a busted plastic latch on the clever pump that is built into the seatpost. I fixed mine by gluing a small metal screw in place of the latch and the folks at Dahon have since redesigned the post-pump to address the issue.

While I like my zippy little bike enough to have written a poem about it, I have naturally made a few modifications to the bike over the years

The bike came stock with comfy Schwalbe Big Apple tires but when I finally wore them out I replaced them with even tougher Schwalbe Marathons. Since I ride in all kinds of weather including the rain and the dark, I replaced the stock brake pads with salmon KoolStop brake pads and added some reflective tape to the frame.

I also splurged and replaced the stock plastic pedals with some very nice metal MKS folding pedals.

While the stock Dahon saddle is pretty comfy, all my bikes tend to wind up with WTB saddles. My Curve is no exception.

My bikes also all tend to end up with Ergon grips and my pal Jason gave me a nice Ergons that he'd custom modified (by chopping off part of the right grip) to work with the Dahon's single twist shifter.

I also added a little bell to the bike and like all my bikes, I've got a bunch of lights on it.

While I use the Curve for travel, it's such a fun little bike to ride that it's the bike I ride most often on errands and when I'm just going out to noodle around. Ironically, this little bike is the bike that winds up hauling the most cargo. I have a little folding nylon bag and if I zip out to the grocery store or pick up a book some place, I've found I can carry what I need balanced on the rear rack, in my backpack or in a bag hanging from the front handlebars.

I can't stress enough how fun and zippy a bike with little wheels feels. My other main bike is my Octocog and it has massive 29" wheels that roll over darn near everything. While I love the big wheels on the trails and the wide open road, in an urban, stop-and-go setting, the Dahon with its 16 inch wheels snaps into motion as soon as the light turns green and it is extremely nimble in traffic.

While I find a small 3 speed like the Curve to be fine (I'm 5'6" tall and have decent power in my legs) other folks might be happier on a bike with a bigger frame and/or a greater selection of gear ratios. Dahon makes a wide range of bikes for a wide range of riders.

When I got my Curve, at the time I thought it seemed like a good deal. It turns out I was wrong about that. It turned out to be a great deal. A great deal of fun in shiny red package.

BTW, I have no financial stake in Dahon, but they did publish my poem in one of their catalogs and sent me some schwag.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson

Issaquah WA USA

Folding Bikes West

Seattle is a pretty darn nice town for cycling and it's got some pretty cool bike shops. This week, I stopped by Folding Bikes West in the Freemont neighborhood to take a look around and test ride a Dahon Curve. Folding Bikes West shares store space, staff and DNA with Electric Bikes Northwest but I didn't really spend any time looking at or taking pictures of the electric bikes. I probably should go back and take some pictures of those and also ask the question that's been bugging me: why does one company have the modifier "West" and the other "Northwest"?

Folding Bikes West has a lot of bikes in a pretty small space. I guess this makes sense, one of the neat things about folding bikes is that they don't take up much space. In one small storefront (half of which is occupied by electric bikes) I got to see Giant, Brompton, Dahon, Bike Friday and Birdy folding bikes.



The various bikes are available for test riding. I've ridden (and owned) various folding bikes over the years and I was short on time, so I only test rode the one bike I'd really come to see, the Dahon D3. The demo D3 pictured below has an optional front basket but the rest of the accessories (fenders, kickstand, rear rack and seatpost pump) are stock on the $395 Curve D3.



Since I have a pretty good background with folders, I was used to the zippy feel of the little wheels. The 2" wide Schwalbe Big Apple tires seem to really hit the sweet-spot in terms of speed and comfort, tough enough to soak up the rough pavement without feeling sluggish. A lot of folks might wish for more gears or a wider range than what is provided by the D3's Sturmey Archer hub, but since I come from the "do more with less" school of thought, I found the 3 gear ratios (42"/56"/77") totally adequate.

The D3 folds quickly into a pretty compact package. Even fumbling around the first time, I was able to fold it in about a minute and the folded package is compact and well-balanced. A little package that would fit easily onto the bus. I returned from my 20 minute test ride with the words "I'll take one."

Dahon Curve D3 -- Folding and Luggage

I continue to be very pleased with my Dahon Curve D3. I've pretty much got the bike dialed in now. The pictures show how the bike folds and what I'm using for luggage. I also added bar-ends, lights and a bell to the bike and for better wet-weather braking, I upgraded the brakes with Koolstop Salmon brake pads.

The bike rides really well. Having the bag up front doesn't seem to bother the handling but like most folders, the D3 is not a bike I can ride no-handed. Single-handed riding is fine, however. The Schwalbe Big Apple tires are great, I've ridden them on rough roads and gravel paths and they are plenty comfy.

Speaking of comfy, the stock saddle is cushier than what I usually ride but it seems right for this bike. I'm quite upright on the bike but I've already logged some fifty mile days on the bike and I still like the saddle. The Dahon is such a kick to ride, I'll probably ride a century on it before too long.

I have done a few multi-modal trips with the Dahon, things like taking the bike on the bus from Seattle to Federal Way and then riding the last few miles to a corporate commute seminar. But some folks are doing really adventurous multi-modal trips, like this guy:

http://www.mezzobikes.com/wp-mezzo/?p=37

Small Is Beautiful

Sarah Chan is stylish and practical on her Dahon D3.

While there isn't a single wheel size that is perfect for every bicycle, owning various small-wheeled bikes over the years has given me an opportunity to get acquainted with the virtues of having a petite machine. While my 29er Octocog is a machine well-suited for the high, rocky wilderness, tiny wheels let my Dahon D3 go many places that my 29er cannot. The city, the train station and the crowded coffee shop all remind me that small is beautiful.

On her blog Sarah Chan tells this story:

"...we ran into some guys who were ogling the bike and having a smoke while I unfolded the Dahon back into it's fully functional form.

A few minutes passed with chit chat about the thing, and I offered for one of the guys to test ride it up and down the block since he was so curious about whether it was fast at all. This is where his friend told him that the only important thing was knowing it was faster than walking. I never heard somebody put it that way before but... that's a good way of looking at it!"

While it is true that small wheels don't hold their speed the way a bigger wheel does, that lack of momentum when rolling means that the wheels also have less inertia when stopped. A little wheeled bike rolls up to speed rapidly and the bike is very maneuverable. The way I tend to describe it is by saying that the little wheels may not be fast, but they are quick. In stop and go city riding, my Dahon tends to be my fastest bike.

People also seem to have a hard time grasping that gear ratios can let a small wheel cover a decent bit of distance for a given pedal stroke. I've ridden a full super-randonneur brevet series as well as Paris-Brest-Paris and London-Edinburgh-London on a 20 inch wheeled Bike Friday and I lost track of how many times I've been asked "don't you have to pedal a lot more to make those little wheels go?" Eventually I just gave up trying to explain the gearing and instead decided to look very serious and say "Yes, it is much, much harder. Fortunately, I'm much tougher than all those other fellows!" And, for the record, Matteo Luzzana is even tougher than I am. He rode LEL on a Brompton T3.

My first folding bike was a Bridgestone Picnica, the machine that made a horrible commute wonderful. At the time (about 26 years ago), Christine and I were living in Bridgeport, CT, she was a brand-new stay-at-home mom and I was working in White Plains, NY. The drive along I-95 was miserable, but I found a van-pool that went from Stratford CT to Purchase NY. So instead of fighting traffic everyday in a car and pouring a lot of gas in a tank, I paid my way into the van-pool. In the morning, I'd ride my bike to Stratford and fold the bike. The bike and I rode in the van to Purchase where I unfolded the bike and rode to White Plains. In the evenings, the process was reversed. I saved money, time and a lot of aggravation. I could read on the van instead of fume at traffic. I got exercise everyday riding my bike. My folding bike and the van-pool made bike commuting possible, even in an "impossible" situation.

While the classic folding bike scenario is a multi-modal journey involving a van or a train or a bus or a plane, having a compact bicycle has many other rewards. Lynette Chang, author of "The Handsomest Man in Cuba" and inventor of the Traffic Cone Bag, rides a Bike Friday because, as she says, "it fits her five-foot-nothing self." Folding bikes are a great option for shorter people looking to get a quality bike. While it can often be hard to find a good conventional bike that fits a person of short stature, folding bikes tend to size down well. This fact can make them great bikes for growing kids, a fact not lost on Anne's daughter over at Car Free Days. Apparently this mothers and daughters sharing bikes thing still holds when the mother and daughter are both adults as well, as evidenced by Melanie and her Mom.

Some folding bikes also fit taller folks. While I personally love my little Dahon Curve D3, it's not a bike I'd recommend to someone over six feet tall. The five-foot tall Sarah Chan does say that her six-foot-four husband sometimes rides her D3 but "Admittedly, it's comical." Actually, that comic effect holds true for darn near anybody on a folding bike, we really do look kind of goofy. And maybe it's my imagination, but it seems to me that drivers are less aggressive when I'm on the Dahon instead of one of my more conventional-looking bikes. I know I'm less aggressive. As I've said before, it is impossible to imagine that you are Lance Armstrong while riding a tiny folding bike.

But tall fellows, like Lazy Rando Vik, can and do log many happy miles on folding bikes. Vik points out another great virtue of a small folding bike in his Bike Locking Case #4. As Vik notes, the best way to lock your bike is to not have to lock your bike by keeping it with you. Tikets, Dahons and Bromptons all fit easily under cafe tables and pack into small corners of small apartments. If you have a car, a folding bike can be quickly and securely stowed in the trunk.

As someone who lives car free in a second story apartment, I can tell you that one reason my Dahon gets used so often is that it is an easy bike to carry up and down stairs. My smallest bike happens to be my lightest bike and my easiest bike to maneuver in tight spots.

Many folks think a cargo bike has to be some massive machine with loads of hauling capacity but in several decades of car free living, I've only found a few occasions where I needed to lug big things around. So, for me, owning a "cargo bike" has never been a priority. Almost every day I do wind up hauling some cargo, but in some sense every bike is a cargo bike. It just depends on how much cargo you are interested in hauling. Melanie's little pink Dahon is the cutest cargo bike ever. If you want to haul more gear but still stick with something compact and foldable, Burley makes a wonderful folding trailer. As the photo of Sarah on the top of this blog illustrates, with the small front wheel there is a lot of room to hang a bag from the handlebars on a folding bike.

Todd from Clever Cycles in Portland wonderfully illustrated just how versatile and fun a folding bike can be by riding his Brompton down the Pacific Coast last August. As Todd described the "perma-grin" that set in on the fifth day of that tour I knew exactly what he meant when he said that he "touched the wire that powers everything." Todd knows that a small machine can connect you with a big, wonderful world. Todd recently reminded me of one of the more interesting aspects of having a small little bike: the social side of things. As Todd says "folding bikes are almost as effective as dogs at breaking social ice. They give strangers something to ask about." If you want to meet people, get a folding bike.

While I'm sure there are many reasons someone might want a folding bike or find one useful, the single best reason I have for owning my little red bike is the big grin it puts on my face pretty much every time I ride it. That, more than anything else, is why I keep those little wheels rolling.

Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson

Issaquah WA USA

Dahon Curve D3

I really like the looks of this little bike. First off, it's red. Second, it folds into a pretty tiny package. Not quite as tiny as a Brompton, but pretty tiny. And at $400, it costs a lot less than a Brompton.
It looks like it folds quite quickly (15 seconds) and would work well for multi-modal trips (bike + bus, bike + train, or bike + plane). The specs here:

http://electricvehiclesnw.com/fbw/d-curve-specs.htm

look really good. I've always liked Sturmey Archer 3-speed hubs and Schwalbe Big Apple tires. And even though the pictures don't show it, the bike comes with fenders and a rear rack. And a final bit of niftiness is that the seatpost contains a built-in tire pump. Cool, eh?

Now, I've done a pretty good job of paring my bike stable down. In fact right now, my only bike is my 1987 green Gary Fisher. I don't need another bike now, do I? But maybe I'll stop by Folding Bikes West this week just to check out the shop. What could it hurt?

The 2009 Seattle Bike Expo

The sign on Pert's Deli says they'll be open at 8:00 AM but the sign also says something about "Summer Hours" and the deli is still dark at 8:20 AM. Perhaps the big flakes of snow coming down were giving folks excuses to linger somewhere warm and dry but on the ride over from Issaquah I'd determined that, once again, things looked worse from the inside looking out than what I actually found when I was out and riding. I retreat to the Starbucks across the street for a coffee and a bowl of oatmeal to wait for my intrepid companions.

It takes a bit of electronic cajoling to lure my companions out. Text messages from Mark mention snow and slick roads. I text back the single word "wuss!" and call him back. "Yeah, it's not sticking," I explain. Mark seems dubious, but I convince him. It'll take some time for him to get to the coffee shop, but he commits to the trip. Brad is just double checking "oh we're still doing this, eh?" He decides to meet up with us by the UW. "I'm packing the cello, don't give me any crap!" Brad is a musician and has a gig in the afternoon.

Thermal regulation can be tricky. While Brad and I manage to get too cold waiting around, Mark is bundled a bit too warm for climbing and has too peal off one layer en route. But we get to the Expo and leave our bikes under the watchful eyes of Melanie and some helpful Bike Works volunteers. The weather is changing, a bit of snow becomes rain becomes clear and always with a some increasing wind.

The Expo is a mix of bike vendors, shops, magazine crews, bike clubs, tour organizers, snack bar makers and other randomly bike related folks. Put on each year by the Cascade Bicycle Club, the event fills a damp and drafty old airplane hanger at Magnuson Park and spills over into several huge equally damp and drafty tents. Despite the less than cozy conditions, the event is always a lot of fun.

For me the event is always at least as much about bike people as it is about the bikes. Willie and Joe are telling the kinds of stories that inspire people to get out the door and the place is packed with everything you need to get out and roll. While there is certainly the usual high dollar eye-candy, this year's Expo also features lots of transport bikes. At the Sammamish Valley Cycles booth, multi-thousand dollar carbon and titanium wonder bikes are on display right next to one of the bike world's great simple bikes, the Bianchi San Jose. It's probably a good thing I don't work at Sammamish anymore, I was always much better at selling San Jose's than Serottas.

I meet many more friends at the Expo and fill up on junk-food flavored healthy snack bars. The Clif folks have an awesome White Chocolate Macadamia Nut bar, while the Larabar people have bars flavored like Cashew Cookies, Pecan Pie and Coconut Creme Pie. I'm nuts about nuts and these things could almost lure me away from Payday Bars and Peanut M&Ms.

I thought I'd been smart by not bringing much money to the Expo but my pal Matt has a wad of cash and he guides me to a booth that has a big selection of Vincita bike luggage. These guys have things like really cheap panniers for five bucks and packs that can morph from being a pannier to a backpack to a rolling bag. I'm a sucker for things that become other things and wind up spending fifteen of Matt's dollars on a seatbag that folds out to become a backpack. It'll be just the thing to go on my Dahon.

REI is showing off this year's FlyBy, which is a Novara branded Dahon folding bike. Last year REI sold through their batch of FlyBys in the first couple months of the year so I think they upped their order for 2009. If I didn't already have my Curve D3, I'd be pretty tempted by the FlyBy.

By 2:30 the wind is really picking up, threatening to blow down some of the big tents. My Bike Works buddies have already folded up their tent and with the strong wind out of the south, I opt to ride home via the north end of Lake Washington. Even though it's a bit longer, I'd rather be on land in high winds than deal with the crosswinds on the bridges. It's a bit of a slog southward from Woodinville to Redmond because the Sammamish River Valley works like a wind tunnel but at Marymoor I stick to the west side of Lake Sammamish and am mostly sheltered from the wind.

Fifty-eight miles of riding and a whole lot of bike geeking isn't a bad way to spend a Sunday.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

$1.18 Dahon Carrying Case

The Internet had told me that the big blue shopping bags sold at IKEA would work as a Dahon carrying case, so last night after work instead of heading straight home I piloted my fun little red bike south to the Renton IKEA. On this Saturday night the store is packed with people, many of whom look like college students getting entire dorm rooms worth of furnishings. My mission should be a quick in & out to get a couple of the fifty-nine cent bags but even though the bags are right by the entrance, I have to weave my way through the giant money-shaking rat maze of a warehouse store. It's easy to resist things too big to lug on my bike, but gadgets that pack flat and have terse umlaut-laden names beckon at every turn. I mostly stick to my original, frugal plan of attack, waylaid only by the füd at the in-store restaurant. I'm a sucker for those $4.99 meatballs and 99-cent choklad nöt bars.

Eventually, I break free from the this florescent shrine to global capitalism, buy my bags and head back out into the night. It's a lovely night and by shifting a block or so off the main roads, the roads clogged with all the folks seeking the fastest way home, I meander in the moonlit night. My headlamp picks out a raccoon couple who I'm sure know far more than I ever will about what can only be seen clearly in the dark.


These pictures attest to the success of my trip. Two fifty-nine cent IKEA bags make an excellent case for a Dahon Curve D3. The second bag upside-down forms the cover to keep the bike safe from prying eyes. It's not a bike, it's just a bag of stuff. Nothing to see here, move along. Perfect for the Jedi Mind Trick of getting my bike into all kinds of places.



Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

The @NYCeWheels KickPed: Early Impressions

I've had my NYCeWheels KickPed for a couple of weeks now and have been scooting around my town of Issaquah, WA. I also folded my scooter, hopped on the bus and scooted around Seattle one day last week. As Christine or my coworkers can tell you, I like this little vehicle. I've been riding it every chance I get. Next month I'll be scooting every day and doing daily #30DaysofScooting posts to this blog, but I can already tell you one result of my scooting experiment: It's a keeper. Scooting is super fun. It can also be a good, low impact workout if you push hard and it's a surprisingly practical mode of transport. As a fifty-four year old man on a scooter, I do get some looks as I scoot about. I assume people are thinking "man, that guy's cool!" but my son tells me I might be mistaken on that score.

The KickPed is very well designed and solidly constructed. Custom built in the USA for NYCeWheels by Patmont Motor Werks (they also make motorized scooters and the Know-Ped and Grow-Ped kickscooters), the KickPed features a trim marine plywood deck, a raw lacquered steel frame and flat free natural rubber tires that are 6 inches in diameter and are a whopping 2.5 inches wide.

In researching scooters, this article by Jeffrey the Barak strongly swayed me in favor of the KickPed. I live in a part of the world that is often damp so I figured a weatherproof deck and tires that grip well in the wet are essential. When I got my scooter I spent a few minutes waxing the unfinished edges of the plywood deck to further weather-proof it.

The wide tires give the scooter a very good ride and while I do ride more cautiously in the rain I can report that they do work well. I wouldn't want to ride a scooter with narrow urethane tires in the rain. My one complaint with the rubber tires on the KickPed is the smell. I work in a bike shop, I'm used to the smell of tires but the KickPed's rubber tires (especially when it was new) REALLY smell like rubber. Like Akron in August. When the KickPed got delivered to the shop had gotten a small hole punched in it in shipping. When the delivery guy dropped the box off he actually asked if there was something dead in there. After a couple of weeks, the smell is better but I still notice it when I fold the scooter and sling it over my shoulder to carry it into a store or onto the bus.

As you can see, when I do the shoulder carry, the scooter's rear wheel is inches from my nose.

I have a nice little folding bike, a Dahon Curve D3, and while I can fold it up in about a minute, it's still a kind of awkward 20-something pound package to lug around. My KickPed folds in one second (really!) and is a narrower 12-pound package that fits into a lot more places. It fits easily beside me on the bus, under a table at a restaurant and I've gotten really good at walking around with it slung over my shoulder or carried like a very odd briefcase.

Because the scooter folds so quickly, I don't need to carry a lock. I just take the scooter in with me any place I go. Also because the tires are solid, I never worry about pumping them up and I don't have to carry a spare tube, pump or patch kit.

The scooter is clearly not as fast as a bike, but I've found it fits a really nice niche in my life. For trips under a couple of miles, it's less hassle than locking and unlocking a bike, but it's faster and more fun than walking. I've discovered that when I walk around town, I go average about 3 miles per hour. When I scoot my average is about 7 miles per hour. When I bike in town my average speed is about 12 miles per hour.

Scooting also has what I call instantaneous mode-switch. I can go from scooting to walking in a second. I walk through tight crowds. I stop to chat with friends or to take pictures of McNugget the Rooster.

I've added two bits of gear to my KickPed, a little bell and a head light. I wear a helmet when I ride because I'm not 100% confident in my scooting skills and I can build up some speed on this thing. 12 mph is about as fast as I go on a downhill before I start riding the brake. I also have a tail light on the back of my helmet and one on my backpack.

With my backpack I can scoot to the store and pick up groceries. If I'm getting a lot or going far I'll take the bike, but the scooter is proving very useful for the short trips.

And it's super fun.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson
Issaquah WA USA