Doris the Brompton Bicycle has a brother!
Friday, February 8, 2013 at 7:37AM
Doris the (yellow) Brompton has a younger brother!
Darth (Vader!) arrived from the UK yesterday!
Darth is a near mint 2011 M6L Brompton that I bought secondhand from Richard. Darth is a black beauty! In this picture my daughter Courtney is riding Doris and my wife Megan is riding Darth!
I can’t wait to take Darth out for a nice long ride this weekend. The extra gears will certainly help on the hills around Stellenbosch and Somerset West! Darth has 6 gears, whereas Doris only has 3.
Darth also came with a Brompton C bag which is awesome! I sold my iPhone 4 to pay for Darth - a good trade in my opinion.
Why Darth!? Well a black beast like this has to have a strong name - so Darth Vader seemed fitting! Plus it starts with a ‘D’ and fits nicely alongside Doris.
Now I know of 3 Bromptons in South Africa - my two in Cape Town and one other owned by a colleague from the University of Pretoria who is living in George (I think his wife may also have one, so there could be 4!?)
This weekend my wife Megan and I will do a little bit more training for the Cape Argus Pick n Pay cycle tour which takes place on the 10th of March. Megan's fitness is coming along very nicely! She rode an Argus about a decade ago and did nicely.
I'm fortunate to have done 11 Argus rides over the years - the 110km ride along the coastline of Cape Town is spectacular. There are few places in the world that are as beautiful. In addition to this, the spirit of the close to 40 thousand timed riders is magnificent!
Since Darth (my M6L Brompton folding bike) has arrived from the UK I will be doing the training ride on him tomorrow. There are lots of hills around Cape Town, so have 6 gears on Darth (as opposed to the 3 gears or Doris) is a great blessing! Although, I will confess that the Schwalbe Kojak tires on Doris, and the 13 year old Sturmey Archer rear hub, are much smoother than the Brompton treaded tires and 6 speed Shimano hub on Darth! I also prefer my brown leather Brooks saddle on Doris for the longer rides (tomorrow we will do 70 km). But, it is important to get some time in the saddle of the bike that I will ride on the day!
Reader Comments (1)
Good day Dion
I'm working in South Korea at the moment and just bought my 1st Brompton. Very happy, but now I see that we lack everything back in SA regarding Bromptons. I was going through the brompton website and it looks like they don't ship to SA. Maybe I'm not looking well enough. What do you do for parts and stuff? I might be getting a bit worried once I'm back in our dearest country. Should I maybe buy a stack of parts here in Korea or am I worried for nothing.
Thanks a million.
Kind regards
Pieter