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| 23 Jun 2005 Elisa Francesca Roselli (nospam@free.fr) |
| KeyWords: France, FOLDING, Dahon, Europe |
You should go the way of the FOLDING bike, before even thinking of ride quality. Here in France the railway network pretends to be "bike friendly". But studies have been done about what happens when you actually try to travel on trains with a bike. It turns out that many routes are not open to you, many trains are not open to you, many scheduled hours are not open to you. The rules are so unclear that you will be fined repeatedly or trapped into paying unannounced supplements. Even the railway attendants and travel agents who sell you your ticket will not be sure about what they are selling you. A trip that may take 3 hours without a bike may take 18 hours when trying to do it entirely legally using only bike-allowing trains. A folder, on the other hand, can be taken as luggage on any scheduled train trip. The only limitation you may encounter is that it will indeed have to be folded. Also, you may find that you want to travel next to it in the baggage area of the corridor for fear that someone other than yourself may walk off with it if you leave it unattended. As for ride quality, I am far more comfortable over distances on my Dahon Impulse P21 than on either of my full sized bikes, and on a recent trip to the Netherlands bitterly regretted not having my folder with me, so painful did I find the provided Gazelle touring bikes in comparison. Elisa Francesca Roselli Ile de France |
