On Cleverchimp's blog (http://todd.cleverchimp.com/blog/) I saw a good idea for riders of folding bikes:

To acheive consistent seat height after folding, put the seat in your armpit - the seat height will be correct when the fingertip of your index finger touches the bottom bracket bolt.

It's pretty close for me, though I find it's just a little short. I prefer to put my fist on the seat, with the thumb up. When my thumb hits the very top of the hip-bone the seat height is about right. For me, anyway :)

My new Swift folding bike finally arrived, after months of waiting.. I bought the frame and wheels from Peter Reich, but built everything else up myself. The picture above is from Baker Beach, on the road from the Presidio towards the Legion of Honor.

The feature that might particularly interest fellow bike geeks is the Sturmey-Archer Phoenix 8 speed hub gears (I certainly can't find many mentions of it on the web). It was a snap to set up and adjust the gears, although the supplied cable was really poor quality - I lost count of how many times I had to adjust and compensate for the cable stretching, but it seemed like virtually every time I was out on the bike for the first week. I don't think it's the cable routing (though the cable is bent more when I fold the bike) because now that the cable has finally stopped stretching it doesn't seem to be affected by folding the bike.

Apart from the cable stretch, the hub seems very good. The range is fine, and because 1st gear is the 1:1 ratio this hub works very well with smaller wheels without having to use a very large chainring (my 42/25 combination gives me 31" - 96"). The downshifts are very smooth (the shifter is increasing cable tension). Upshifts are less smooth, they sometimes "hesitate" or hit neutral. Usually it's enough to momentarily stop pedaling, but if it hits neutral I need to back-pedal before it goes into gear. I don't know if this is going to continue to be an issue, or if it will improve as the hub wears in, or if I can lubricate something that will fix the problem?

We enjoyed a very hot Sunday afternoon in Dolores Park last weekend, listening to the San Francisco Symphony playing Falla, Bernstein and Tchaikovsky - ending with the 1812 overture, complete with pyrotechnics that could be heard a very long way.. We came early to claim a space in the shade of a tree, and kept having to move our picnic to stay in the shade as the afternoon went on!

Yesterday we went to the Yerba Buena Gardens to see the Forest exhibition. The exhibition was a little disappointing (very small), but the gardens are nice and it was great to be out. Lots of people were around enjoying the sunshine with their kids too; Yerba Buena is a little breathing space in the center of the city! There's a waterfall, behind which is a speech by Martin Luther King; it's very moving (though it isn't the well-known "I have a dream" speech..


(PS: easy & secure bike parking at Yerba Buena Gardens)

Testing, testing... the most unoriginal first post ever!