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Welcome to BootieBike

Hi and welcome to Bootiebike. My name is Brian and this site is about my bikes. I hope you like it.

The 'abnormal bikes' tagline primarily refers to small wheelers and folders that are significant or interesting in some way, and if that appeals to you then you've come to the right place. My first love is the Moulton and its small-wheeled English contempĀ­oraries, but IĀ find it hard to resist anything quirky or unusual. After all, if a Neckermann folder or Katakura Silk Porta-Cycle came your way, what would you do? Well, that's what I did too.

My first love is the Moulton and its small-wheeled English contemp­oraries, but I find it hard to resist anything quirky or unusual. After all, if a Neckermann folder or Katakura Silk Porta-Cycle came your way, what would you do? Well, that's what I did too.

If you haven't already, consider checking out the 'About small wheelers' page. This handy backgrounder will prime you for most of the bikes you will see here.

If you prefer to jump straight into the 'bike' pages, you can expect an unstructured mix of desc­riptive information, back­ground history and my impressions. And don't forget the 'Soap Box' section. Like the rest of the site, the Soap Box will develop over time into something more substantial and diverse.

You should be aware that I don't have a background in the bicycle industry, nor do I claim to be a bike expert. What I know I've picked up along the way, and Bootiebike is as much a journey of discovery for me as it may be for you. So feel free to disagree with anything on this site – it's only one person's opinion.

BootieBike is named in honour of the first bike I put on display – the incomparable Bootie, or more properly, 'Bootie Folding Cycle'. In the years since that bike hit the web, I've been gradually working my way through my other bikes. I look forward to adding more to the site, but rebuilding and writing about them is a slow process, so it can be many months between additions.

I write BootieBike manually using the Notepad++ text editor on an Intel NUC PC running the superb Ubuntu Linux. I process the photos with GIMP and create the illustrations with Inkscape. All these applications are free and open source. All the coding, text, illustrations, photography and mistakes is/are my own work, except where indicated. All orig­inal content is published under the Creative Commons Attrib­ution Share Alike 3.0 licence.

Finally, a warning about Internet Explorer. I recommend you avoid that browser altogether. Internet Explorer is a security risk and it cannot properly display all the features of this and other modern websites. There is much info about this on the web if you would like to find out more. There are plenty of modern options available for Windows computers, such as Chrome, Firefox or Opera, and they all offer a better, safer browsing experience.

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