It should not get stuck on checkpoints, I think that idea might be mostly superstition.
If someone mines hard to drive the difficulty up I do not know if it has fast adapting like DeVCoin and GRouPcoin or will get stuck at high difficulty a long time like NaMeCoin did way back when.
I think though that litecoin did improve adapting speed at least slightly, else it would be getting stuck at high difficulty each time all the miners go back to bitcoin after heavily mining litecoin during moments when it is momentarliy looking more profitable to mine than bitcoin.
As a largely-ignored coin everyone mining it might be better off to mine no harder than necessary for however many months they can instead of rushing into a period where most of them can't really get any coin as difficulty is way high.
For a long time the main attraction of BBQcoin, GRouPcoin, CoiLedCoin and I0Coin has been they are so ignored you can quietly mine at low difficulty month after month slowly building up a nice stash.
BBQcoin are relatively valuable right now because only people who care about them have them thus might be less inclined to dump them. Once heavy mining happens it will mostly by people looking to dump them, they might make an exchange too, or maybe our not making an exchange will cause them to ignore it longer - if so the longer we can hum away at low difficulty with no exchange the better! Once it has gone through a subsidy halving, or even a few of them, will be plenty time to think about making an exchange to see what they might be worth by then.
-MarkM-