*HANDMADE BIKE SHOW* Bike Friday wows the crowd with ultralight Fridays, ultrafast folds

An impressive roll call of Oregon custom bicycle builders made for a packed house at the inaugural Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show in Portland, Oregon on November 11, 2007. Bike Friday designers Hanz Scholz and Rob English manned a booth, along with Bike Friday brazer Eric Estlund,  displaying prototype Fridays, including Rob's ultralight white Friday (see video), and a super light, completely fillet-brazed 'Speeding tikitTM. Rob reports from the booth ... - LC

This was the newly-formed OBCA (Oregon Bicycle Constructors' Association)'s first attempt at the show, and I think everyone concerned was overwhelmed by the public response. The event attracted 20 vendors, with Bike Friday positioned nicely opposite the entrance at one of the four larger center booths.

The show wasn't meant to start until 11am, but at 10 there were already people nosing about. Soon after that it got very crowded, and remained so until about 6:30 p.m - over 1800 people passed through the door!

Lots of interest in our Fridays - with limited space we showed my superlight project bike (hanging on the scales to show off it's 15lb weight), Hanz and Gretta's pink XL tandem, my Pocket Rocket Pro with added titanium, Eric Estlund's (BF brazer) retro-styled Pocket Rocket Pro fixie, the sub-20lb show Speeding tikit, and two standard tikits (one in a TravelCase).

We ran a competition to win 50% off a Bike Friday, which got over 130 entries. I spent a lot of the day wowing the crowd with my less-than-two second tikit fold (are ya ready? Don't blink now....) to much chorus of "do it again."

Lots of customers came to visit too. A very long and tiring day, but great to see so much enthusiasm for handbuilt custom bicycles ...