what we've done so far

Apart from online research, not much. On Monday of this week I stopped by Clever Cycles between appointments, spoke with Dean (very friendly, very helpful) and looked at assembled Bakfiets as well as a small number of frames waiting in the basement to be built up. They also have, I think, the first completed CETMA bike there on the floor (with a basket of seat cushions for the Bakfiets sitting on its platform rack), though my understanding is they aren't retailing them or anything like that. I was offered the chance to ride on the spot, but I didn't have time and wanted to do that when we could both try it out. I left planning to make a family trip on the upcoming Friday, but it turned out I had the middle of Wednesday free instead...

The weather was beautiful around lunchtime and we each took one of the rental/demo Bakfiets out for a short spin - I even tried to test uphill capability (more of my legs than of the bike really) by riding up from their location at 9th and Hawthorne up towards 26th and Division (made it most of the way before I rationalized that I needed to turn back so I wouldn't sweat up my work clothes too much...). Though it feels heavy going uphill, the weight really isn't noticeable in the flats. The gearing is set up so you can change while stopped which makes it easier to move away from stops, especially if you stop quickly and don't downshift. The steering is odd - very light - and of course even though I was clearly told I would probably steer too much, I promptly got on the bike, turned a little too much towards the street, and severely overcorrected right back towards the loading dock. Ha ha. I was able to stop without totally looking like an idiot (well, I didn't crash or fall over or anything at least), and managed to steer in a much more dignified manner through the rest of my test (even made a couple of low speed u-turns on narrow streets/between parked cards). My wife, of course, rode away flawlessly, prior to my ride, on her test ride. Showoff. 

Clever Cycles, currently, rents out Bakfiets either for fun or for extended tests for $45 a day or $95 for three days with the option to put rental fees towards a purchase (I think there's a time limit on that), and we put down a deposit/booked a rental for next weekend. As the shop is 6.5 miles from our house, 6.5 miles downhill really, and as I'm planning to ride the bike home after a full day of work, it should be a good test of both the bike and my out of shape body. To help a little with the latter, I rode down to the shop (very relaxing) and back (not quite as relaxing, but not as bad as I was expecting) yesterday morning on my old and very seldom ridden in recent years mt bike - surprisingly my legs feel fine today though my, ahem, posterior is a little tender (but hey, that super hard leather racing saddle sure looks cool).

Anyway, that's it for now - not sure if there will be any posts before (probably not) but definitely I will try to keep up with our testing of the Bakfiets next weekend. I think, after we return that, I might ask if they'll let me try out the CETMA bike there. If not, we'll probably take a trip down to Eugene on a subsequent weekend, as I'm strongly drawn to the modular aspect (I like to fiddle with things). To that end as well, one thing I'm very interested in from our rental is taking a close look at how the box is attached and whether it will be feasible to make it easily removable to be replaced with other things like a cargo platform or something.