The trouble with bikes

Is that there are too many to choose from.

In the last couple of days, just as I've been preparing to head down to Brisvegas and try to make up my mind between the two bikes I've been umming and ahhing about these past weeks (months?), I start thinking about a third one.

I've been deliberating avoiding looking at the Dahon, because everything I've read has put it at number three on the list of folding bikes, and I figured I'd give myself a break and limit my indecision to the top two.

But, I went and looked it up last week, didn't I? And now I've got yet another option worth looking at.

It's all Peter's fault.

As I've been investigating the Brompton I've become mildly attached to Peter, from NYCewheels. He does the product review/ads for his bike shop (if I lived in New York, I would buy something from this shop, just to thank them for having such useful YouTube clips), and I've been watching his stuff on the Brompton very closely. Then I stumbled across another review of his where he was showing off the Dahon Speed P8, and it looked a heck of a lot more all-roady than the Brompton.

This is important, for Townsville. There are sections of road and bike path that may as well be off-road, they are so badly torn up and poorly maintained. There's a section on my route home that practically shakes the light of the handlebars every time, and the council recently repainted it, so I'm guessing they don't really intend to resurface it.

I accidentally dropped into another permanent pothole on my way home last night (sunken manhole covers are a common occurrence in Townsville bikelanes), and it felt quite jarring with my 24inch wheels. I'm not sure how it's going to go with 16. Maybe getting the 20 wheels is the better option for a town like Townsville? Dahon and BF both have 20s, and judging from the pictures the Dahon is a slightly neater fold...

As a certain annoying comic strip character would say:

Ack!