Ray Sachs
Legend
- Location
- Not too far from Philly
- Name
- you should be able to figure it out...
Trip: We're driving to Montreal, then driving to Wisconsin to drop off our dog at my wife's folks' place. He'll stay there for the month while we carry on. After WI, though, it's all bromptons-on-the-train until we have to fly from the end of the run back to WI. Then we drive the dog back to Boston. So for the majority of it, we'll be hopping off a train, unfolding the bikes, tossing the panniers onto the bikes, the girl will climb up onto her little saddle mounted in front of mine, and off we'll go to whatever AirBnB we've booked to stay in. During the 2-5 days we spend in each spot, we'll be riding the route/s we've planned to show for each city, making notes on the route, and shooting images for it. Also we'll be making contacts with future route ambassadors for that city, hotel owners (revenue model depends in part on them), brewery owners, bike shop owners, and local bike advocate groupy types.
Ray: There's basically no reason to ever sell a Brompton as far as I can tell, though I'm glad people do... both ours were bought used off Craigslist (Texas and Minneapolis - good thing they fold up small and light for shipping!). I love the green. Both ours are boring black, but both also got tricked out by their previous zealot owners. Both came with generator front hubs for permanent battery-free lights, quick disconnect bag mounts and a total of 4(!) bags to choose from, and somehow both have the titanium forks and swing arms to save weight. And the kid seat mount bar thing... just happened to come with the second one. And a tool kit that hides in the frame, and spare tubes, and a top-shelf NYC u-lock, and and and. Gotta love buying someone's well-sorted kit at a discount.
Lenses: Right now I'm struggling little bit with the X-T1. I think I'm a primes kinda guy, but in practice I keep swapping between the 14 and the 35 like crazy. I probably should've gotten the 23, because I know and love that length, but I thought "no I have the X100 for that." Meanwhile, I'm basically trying to get the 14 and the 35 to BE the X100. I still see in that length, new lenses be damned. So the idea of the 27 being a little longer than what I expect (but not too much longer), and being so physically small, seems like a home run. These are expensive decisions to dither over. Meanwhile in the mail here comes a 56 1.2... I'm thinking I need to take a week, lock one prime onto it, go shoot every day at lunch, and rewire my brain into seeing new lengths better.
Sounds like a great trip. Perfect way to use Bromptons too - no long tours on 'em but perfect for getting around an area once you're there. I've read of people doing huge tours on them but I can't seem to handle more than 10-15 miles at a time on them - even when I was in prime riding shape. But I love tooling around towns on mine. Mine has the bag mount on front, but I only ever got around to buying one bag for it. No other fancy doo-dads, but I did swap out the bars when I got it for flat bars because I liked a slightly more aggressive position. At this point in my dotage, I'd probably be real happy to have the original bars back on it. And of course you have to have a Books on it!
Good luck with lenses. I was going back and forth between the 14 and 23 a lot when I was out in the Bay Area, but I'd usually just stick one on and shoot with it for a couple of hours and then switch to the other and use IT for a couple of hours - so not a lot of switching back and forth...
-Ray