FOLDING BIKES BLOG
Stories, tutorials, and advice from the Montague Bikes team.Past and Future Tense: Health of a Nation
Villages - Were We Started From Once upon a time, we started out in villages. Well, obviously it's a quite a bit more complex than that, but for our purposes we're starting here. In small communities you know the people who pass you on the street, things are near...
Heraldry: Headbages
Hello folding bike: What's in a name? Or a symbol for that matter? How about a head badge? Some sort of heraldry? Way Back When Human beings have been using symbols as signs of solidarity for millennia. From before Roman times when military units could be...
Just Charming: A Commuter Interlude
In between all of this CX build business I end up coming upon things that work marvelously for a commuter build. One of these is the do-it-yourself classy charmer, the wine cork fender spacer. Fenders come in many forms, from easily removed race blades to long-term...
Montague Bikes for Iron Maiden
The life of a rockstar is one of travel; touring the world to put on a show in a new city every night. When your shows are on the 'world tour' scale, they're no small production. It takes a lot of work and a lot of manpower to set up the stage, props, lighting,...
I Want to Hold Your Hand: Handlebars
Part 5 in the “CX First Timer Custom Build Experiment” Admittedly the name handlebar is a little misleading; they're actually tubes, only the very early bikes had an actual steel bar - think how heavy that would be! So Many Flavors Handlebars come in many flavors,...
Paradise City?
We're in the Paper! An article entitled "Biking to the Future in Boston" by Peter DeMarco appeared in the recent The Boston Globe Magazine.... ...and guess who's representing on the front? Team Montague (denoted by the fuchsia arrow)! [Copyright belongs to The N.Y....
The Bicycle as Art
We each have that dream bike (or bikes), the one that makes us sigh and take leave of the moment to dream of cycling uninhibited through whatever cycling dreamscape we each keep in our hearts (the Alps, the urban jungle, Pacific Coast Highway along Big Sur - whatever...
Gearing: Cyclocross attributes for Commuting
Part 4 in the “CX First Timer Custom Build Experiment” What's in a gear? When doing a build it's a very important question to ask. Just what is this bicycle going to be doing, where is it going? My regular bicycle is a fixed gear - it is used for urban transport...
Celebrating Independence
Just about every city, even those in the frequently frozen north, seems to have at least a few cyclists. In some cities more than others there are cycling communities, like minded people who gather together and ride. These groups and communities come in many forms,...
Independence Day
From all of us here at Montague HQ: Happy Independence Day! Happy 236th Birthday to the United States! Broadcasting from where the nation was born, we hope that wherever you may be that today is festive and joyful! Reading from another nation? Regardless of where...
Encounters with Nature
Taking a slight pause from the cyclocross build series... Encounters with Nature Sometimes when you ride, just for the sake of riding, you end up further afield than you had originally planned - and sometimes it gets dark. Lacking superhero vision capacity I have a...
Options and Preferences
Part 3 in the "CX First Timer Custom Build Experiment" In case you're just tuning in, we've begun the adventure of a first time bike build - using a Montague folding frame as the start of a cyclocross (CX) build. How to know which one is right? Last time we talked...
The Romance of the Alloys
Part 2 in the "CX First Timer Custom Build Experiment" So whereas on this end I already know I'll be starting out on a Montague frame, let's say you wanted to go ahead and do a first time build yourself. Where to begin? Well most of us learn when we start out that...
Let’s Start from the Very Beginning
Part 1 in the "CX First Timer Custom-Build Experiment" Before your bike, or my bike (or anyone's bike for that matter) was rolling down the road it had to be built. (In this instance we're not discussing welds and alloys per se, but more the actual fitting together...
More Than Just a Set of Wheels
"When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking." -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Take a...
Weird Bikes
When I'm out riding my Montague, the bike sometimes attracts a little bit of attention. People want to know about the double top tube, see how the bike folds, and how the quick release levers work. But a lot of the time, no one really notices. If you want a bike...
Saddles: Is More Expensive More Comfortable?
There’s that old saying that you get what you pay for. And that’s definitely true for some things. Vacuum cleaners, for example. I once bought a $15 dollar vacuum and while it was fine for some things, it didn’t have enough suction power to get pet hair out of my...
Don’t Park in the Bike Lane!
On any given day, riding in the bike lane, I have to swerve out and into traffic because someone is double parked or a truck is making a delivery, and instead of finding a proper parking spot or idling in the main traffic lane, they decide to pull into and block the...
