gratitude on a sunny day
Although the temperature is glorious during the summer in Taiwan, Taipei in particular is somewhat depressing due to the overlapping rainy season. I suppose if you enjoy epic thunderstorms it's pretty cool - and i do enjoy those to a point - but when they're happening every single day it kinda throws a wrench into any kind of outdoor activity
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I have looked into folding bikes several times over the past few years, because they seem like such a perfect solution for travel, but the thing that stops me from pulling the trigger is the flying story. The only folder that appears to be realistically packable for flying - and then immediately rideable on the other end - is the Brompton. The Birdy also folds quite small, but apparently it's less of a "solid" fold, which means most people are putting them in hard cases, which to me totally defeats the point of having a folding bike in the first place, since if you get to the other end and need to take a taxi somewhere to stash your case then you didn't gain much over the non-folding way where you need to haul the box to a bike store.
Here in Taiwan the Tern BYB is the smallest locally-produced folder, which folds bigger than both the Brompton and Birdy, but it's much more affordable and uses BMX wheels and other standard kit, which makes it more appealing. Even still, it's too expensive to want to risk trying to put on a plane in a soft bag, just in case it gets squished, so now we're back at a hard case or custom cardboard box again.
The tension is that i have no reason to ever really fold a bike outside of flying, because if i was going to spend half the time jumping on and off public transport in Taiwan then i could just use a share bike anyway. For touring in Taiwan away from public transport, it would be more convenient to have a bike with lots of gears to handle the mountains, which if you want that on a folder you're paying almost as much as a car, and then you really, really don't want your bike to ever get stolen or damaged, but a cheapie hybrid could give you 24 gears no problem.
Maybe the trick would be to get a second hand folder, like the kind people ride all over town and leave rust-encrusted in alleyways all over the city. (I think most people here buy folders because they're small and then never fold them.) In Taiwan, Giant make cheap urban folders, Merida, KHS... Then if i put it on a plane in a soft bag and it gets busted i didn't really lose anything. But the super cheap folders that people use here are bi-fold 20", so maybe too big to comfortably fit on a plane inside one of those big Ikea bags that could pass as "normal" (i.e. not oversize) luggage anyway... It's so frustrating.
TLDR flying is shit not only because the flight itself is a huge carbon hit, but because it encourages car-based travel to and from the airport too. This is a bit same as my frustration with trying to find camping sites as a bike tourer in Canada and the US, where we have to pay the same overnight price as someone arriving in a massive truck or SUV even though we will use far less space and damage the roads/environment much less. The world just isn't designed for low carbon self-powered travel... But the only way to change that is to keep on trying to do it despite it all, i guess.
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