Word: bike
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...while sitting outside a café in Florence sipping cappuccino (there was a lot of coffee drinking that trip), watching women commuting to work. They were cycling by in their fabulous outfits and their Prada pumps, and I decided that this was a sport I could get behind. But biking in Europe turned out to be a whole lot easier than biking back in New York City, mostly because of the absence of storage space in my third-floor walk-up and a personal aesthetic sense that did not allow for a bike hung on the wall to count...
...last, a new crop of folding bicycles may be able to reunite me with my lost hobby. Considered toys or flimsy oddities just a decade ago, the latest generation of collapsibles--bikes that, thanks to a few strategic hinges and latches, can pretzel themselves down to the size of a suitcase--combines hipness and high function, not to mention the ability to fit easily into a closet. "I won't ride a standard bike anymore," says Channell Wasson of Foldabikes.com who has been selling folders for more than 15 years, and riding them even longer. "We call them cumbersomes...
...folding bike unfolded is readily recognizable, with its low profile and characteristically small wheels. It's those wheels that account for the greatest savings in space, but they also cause the greatest resistance from some buyers--at least the ones who take their biking very seriously. A single spin of a big wheel, after all, takes you over a lot more terrain than a single spin of a little...
Buyers looking for a brand that offers them more price options are flocking to the current leader, Dahon. The manufacturer offers dozens of models and styles, weighing from 23 lbs. to 31 lbs., and priced from $379 to $2,000. But other companies are jumping in. Citizen Bike launched just over a year and a half ago, selling foldables directly from its website at citizen citizenbike.com with models starting at $179. "Our philosophy is affordability," says company president Avery Pack. Bike Friday, a folding-bike manufacturer since 1991, offers a more boutique product, with custom-made bikes beginning...
...requests. Leathers can be quite obliging: he built a wooden Alamo, equipped with an armadillo-shaped drawbridge, for a Dallas elementary school and fashioned a crude telephone system out of three-inch plastic piping for Hamilton, Va. Safety considerations, however, usually force him to reject water slides, underground tunnels, bike racetracks and skateboard ramps...