More Brompton stuff on its way to Brilliant Bikes

So - something goes wrong with your Brompton?

What's the most likely with such a reliable bike as your Brompton - could it be a puncture?

At Brilliant Bikes we already have a range of inner tubes and tyres for your Brompton ... In fact the Brompton Kevlar tyre s our top selling item.

It's fantastic to announce that very soon, we will have more Brompton stuff - a full range of Brompton spares / accessories.

Check back soon - we'll add details here - or check out www.BrilliantBikes.co.uk

Together we can create a better place where more people use bikes for transport (as well as recreation of course!)

Re-cycling by bike

Better - but still not good.

Having learned from yesterdays experience I tried the following changes:

1/ Took a normal forked bike (yesterday was a Cannondale with a Lefty fork, which meant that the bags I was using for carrying the bottles kept sticking into the spokes of the front wheel).

2/ Tool 2 bags instead of 3 - to help balance the bike better.

But I still had the following problems:

I managed to get up more speed - but because of the suspension fork the bags somehow managed to get into an out of sync. swing - so as one bag swung forwards, the other swung back - making it look like I was drunk (rather than just stupid) as I weaved down the road.

When needing to turn left I couldn't signal as a/ the bag may have fallen off the bike or b/ I may have lost balance - resulting in not letting 2 ladies who were crossing the road knowing that I was going to swerve around them ....

Which resulted in me being on the wrong side of the road (luckily in a narrow car par entrance) facing an on-coming car!

Anyway - I managed to deposit the bottles at the bank - which means 2 car journeys saved so far.

And no puncture this time (it wasn't glass yesterday - but a thorn from a previous cross country bike ride).

Still room for improvement though.

- Andrew

Cycling to Re-cycle

It wasn't as easy and pain free as I had hoped.

First as I pulled out of the house I almost ran over a pedestrian walking her dog - "It's not as easy as it looks when you see films of India" I said, she just smiled back like I was mad!

The problem was that I had 3 bags of bottles (mostly glass water bottles - not wine - honest).

2 bags on one side and 1 bag on the other - this made the bike steering somewhat unpredictable.

Combined with the fact that the 2 bag side wanted to run on the front wheel.

So I decided it may be safer to use the pavement rather than the road.

I made it unscathed to the bottle bank and jettisoned by baggage - all seemed good.

Until I got home and discovered the puncture - was it the glass at the re-cycling centre?

This means I have to use my Park Tool puncture repair kit and spend some time fixing my own bike!

Lesson learned - take just 2 bags and stay balanced.

Let's hope it goes better next time.