---
title: "20 Years with Bike Friday"
url: https://bikefriday.com/20-years-with-bike-friday/
type: post
date: 2017-02-22
modified: 2018-11-14
markdown_url: https://bikefriday.com/20-years-with-bike-friday.md
author: "mattc"
---

# 20 Years with Bike Friday

![Bike Friday by British Telephone Booth in Scotland](https://bikefriday.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/WP_20161111_11_43_24_Rich-1024x576.jpg)

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#### Having been around for nearly 25 years, it's not uncommon for us to receive updates from customers who bought their Bike Friday 20+ years ago. The following was a lovely note that we recently received from Steve S. in the UK:


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In the Nineties, I started to travel a lot on business in the UK, spending two or three nights away during the week. I wanted to take my bike in the car so that I could cycle for exercise and exploring. Staying in hotels, for security I wanted my bike to be in the car not on a rack on the outside. I saw and rode a Bike Friday on a cycling holiday on Nantucket Island – the perfect answer to my needs. You replicated the geometry of my lovely Raleigh touring bike in a New World Tourist, # 3397, and I paid up at the end of October 1996.


Since then, this Bike Friday has been my only bike. Over the last twenty years, through my fifties and sixties, I have ridden it from home, on business trips and on holidays, for exercise and day touring. Whenever I take it somewhere new to me, I like to find the nearest summit or pass. I love the climbing and revel in the descending. The bike is stiff for climbing and responsive for flying down hill.


It has never let me down. It's used some consumables: brake blocks, cables, tyres, chain wheel, chains and sprockets. The last rear set I fitted included two lower gears to help me up the Brendon, Blackdown and Quantock Hills locally, as well as favourite areas of Scotland. I've worn out a saddle. I even managed to cycle many miles with the bottom bracket pivot bolt missing. (I check it regularly now for tightness.)


I changed from toe straps to spd clips (and haven't fallen off (yet)). I celebrated your anniversary by fitting a ‘since 1992’ headstock badge.


The climate here allows me to cycle all year round. Now I'm retired, as well as UK holidays, I go out twice a week and do at least twenty, hilly miles. I still average 12 miles an hour which was all I did in my forties.


This bike will see me out. I can't see any reason why it shouldn't go on for ever.


Many thanks to you and all your team for the concept, detail design and manufacturing quality of your exceptional product.


Very best wishes


Steve


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### To learn more about Steve's bike, the New World Tourist, click the blue link!


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