It’s been about 12 months since I purchased my Avenir folding bicycle, and while the head-turning novelty has worn off, the flexibility that a bicycle adds to my commute has not. Originally, the decision to buy a bicycle came out of a parking problem. My house is a 15 minute drive from Brampton GO station, but the parking lot tends to fill up by 7:15 am. If there were no spots remaining then the only other solution was to drive another 20 minutes across Brampton to Bramalea GO station. In order to avoid the parking lot altogether I would have to walk 20 minutes from my front door to the Orangeville GO bus stop for a 15 minute trip to Brampton GO. A bike would have cut the walk to 4 minutes, but there was no place I felt comfortable locking up the bike for the day and I had a desire to take the bike downtown to save on TTC fares. The solution was a folding bike, which are allowed on rush hour GO trains and could be folded, bagged, and placed in the luggage compartment of almost all GO buses. (more…)