Wonderful fellow-Brompton-folding-bike-owner’s email today from my old Dart Centre friend and colleague in snowed-in New York Bruce Shapiro.

“Mark – I have one more reason to be grateful for your introducing me to Brompton bikes all those years ago:

As you probably know we were hit by a blizzard overnight.

I am hunkered down at home in New Haven, where it snowed starting at 8 am yesterday and where at last count we had 34 inches on the ground.

Around noon yesterday I was doing power-outtage preparation – flashlights, candles, all that stuff – and realized that our household had run completely out of wine – not a condition in which to face a crippling winter storm.

There is a bottle shop a bit up the road where we had a case of red on order. But I didn’t want to get in the car. For one thing the roads were very slick. Even more important, I have a precious parking space in front of the house and didn’t want to lose it.

So I hopped on the Brompton and headed out into the storm. At the wine shop I manged to get all 12 bottles into my bike’s handlebar T-Bag – the clerk couldn’t believe his eyes.

Let me tell you – a case of wine provides remarkable stability when biking through a snowstorm.

No slipping, no sliding, just cruised along in a nice low gear.

The wine and I made it home without incident.”

Ride on, Bruce!