If you need to stick to your principles and quite simply can not or will not sacrifice what your stand for then Rietti's latest addition to the world of folding bikes (or more specifically the 'Army recon' style of folding mountain bikes) has got your name written all over it.
In your case money may or not be an option or it just may be a case of refusing to compromise your ideals. Let's face it what you drive or what you ride says a lot about who you are; there's just no getting around that in today's society. Personally I always have been and always will be a sports car kind of guy. My sports car is my identity and it says as much about me as does my leather jacket, my watch, my sneaker collection and my girlfriend. It's sleek, stylish, fast, changes gears and changes pace in a hurry and on the fly and maneuvers in and out of traffic and around current and potential obstacles in the blink of an eye. If I want to get downtown from my office on the outskirts of the city then I just crank up some classic 'Prodigy' on my top of the line stereo system and I'm there in twenty minutes.
Now what does this have to do with an Army Recon folding mountain bike you ask... Everything.
I'm about as likely to trade in my sports car for a truck, van, station wagon, family sedan or even an SUV as I am to start wearing corduroys and Dockers or boat shoes and crocs; it's just not going to happen, not now, not later, not ever. My sports car defines my style and YES style matters, it's who I am and how I relate to my world.
Now personal history tells me lots of people either don't know what they want and who they are or are too willing to compromise those things without a moment's hesitation. I can speak from personal experience. Some years back before I'd discovered the world of mountain bikes never mind the folding mountain bike or better yet the Army Recon folding mountain bike by Rietti I bought an Eagle Talon. Now being a bit of a trend setter and possessing a clear sense of personal style I also, before the fad, picked up a thin, supple lambskin button up ¾ black leather jacket on a business trip to London, England. Although I was the first of my friends to own both a black leather jacket of this cut and style and also the first to buy an Eagle Talon I would not be the last. Shortly afterwards two of my friends proceeded to buy the coat and the car and then there were three.
Now for me my Eagle Talon served my purposes perfectly. It had decent gas mileage for a high performance machine, was relatively easy to park, could comfortably take one passenger (my girlfriend) and was uncomfortable enough to discourage unwelcome, tag-a-longs thanks to the microscopic back seat. Also importantly the back seat folded down and I could remove the wheels from my Kona 'Lavadome' mountain bike and although somewhat dirty and somewhat inconvenient in the days prior to folding mountain bikes I was able to take my mountain bike on regular off-roading weekend adventures. As for my two friends, well, six months after buying an Eagle Talon they traded it in for an SUV, a mortgage and a white picket fence with the wife and 2.5 kids. Of course I'm exaggerating for effect but it does make me wonder if some people really know what they're looking for if they're willing to change their mind faster than I change gears.
Now to be honest I'm not much of a gearhead or even much of an extreme/adrenaline athlete or enthusiast and I'm not keen on adding more war scars like the ones I picked up in the year that I squeezed my mountain bike into the back seat of my sports car. You see long before the good people at Rietti designed their Army Recon folding mountain bike, a weekend warrior had to compensate for the lack of a suitable folding mountain bike by folding his backseat instead.
While I sold my Eagle Talon long ago and my Kona mountain bike is somewhere in Thailand at my father's house the endearing message is the necessity of a folding mountain bike versus a standard issue mountain bike; especially one that is durable, reliable and delivers performance and style like the Army Recon folding bike from Rietti. I choose to travel light on my life journey now and neither my mother nor my sister has any extra storage space in their Vancouver apartment so your typical non-folding mountain bike struggles in this scenario. It appears that as big, beautiful and untamed as Canada's outdoors may be nobody downtown or in the suburbs has any space to spare these days.
