Weekend recap: Fiets!

All last week Rolan was hinting that he had a surprise for me. He gave me few hints, but told me that he had to pick it up from Middelburg (basically Belgium!) on Friday after work. He got home on Friday night around midnight with tired eyes and...

Photo by Flickr user mulleady

... my new bike! Of course it has taken awhile to get to this point, as any big purchase does for us.

We decided on a folding bike (vouwfiets) because I wanted to bike on my daily commute. With a folding bike, I can bike to the train station, fold it up for train travel, and then bike to work.

I also liked the idea of being able to bring my bike with me when we go on vacation, since it's really hard to find rental bikes in Holland that fit my short legs. (People here are super tall! Seriously!)

Lastly, it's nice to not have to worry about locking up my bike since I can just bring it with me -- indoors and outdoors. There is even a line of bags you can attach to the front so that when the handlebars are not folded, you can use your bike as a shopping cart.

We visited a local bike shop two weekends ago to peruse the folding bikes, thinking we were going to fall in love with a Dahon Ciao since that's the bike I loved on the internet. But it only took one comparison of the folding mechanism between the two to know that the Brompton was the one for me. It was lighter, it was easier to fold and the salesman told us the Bromptons tend to last longer. Sold right there already, but then we watched him do this:



The store we went to didn't have the color I wanted with the 6 gear option and I wasn't sure if we should buy it new (€1200!) right then and there, so we decided to think about it. But sneaky Rolan found the EXACT bike we were looking for on a second-hand web site for much, much cheaper.

We tried it out yesterday for a 30-minute trip to Rolan's sister's house for a birthday party and it worked perfectly. Now I just have to get my legs to be able to do the same...

So how was your weekend? Did anyone surprise you? Finally pull the trigger on any big purchases you've been planning?