I’ve raved about my Lectric XP eBike for a while now. While I haven’t used it this summer (until today, he foreshadows forebodingly), last year I put hundreds of miles on it. The thing is, an eBike, or a, “pedal assist” bike, makes riding a bike fun again.
Remember when you were 12 years old, and you could ride your bike all day? Nothing was too far, and while hills meant standing up and pedaling hard, it was just a minor annoyance. As an adult, a pedal-assist bike is a lot like that. With the fancy pedal bikes I’ve had over the years (as an adult), I never wanted to actually go anywhere far. Because I’d have to pedal back home. And it’s impossible to know when you’re exactly, “half worn out.” So to avoid getting stranded somewhere miles from home, I just never went very far at all. Or, let’s be honest, I just never rode my bicycle. But my Lectric brand eBike changed all that. The battery has about a 20 mile range, and with the cargo rack on the back, I could carry my battery charger and limp to an outlet somewhere if I went further than my range anxiety suggested. Heck, I actually bought a second, larger battery so I could take it with me on that cargo rack, and run my first battery totally dry without any worries about getting stranded.
Today, my battery did not die. But I felt like I might…
My family lives in Petoskey, Michigan. It’s a small town overlooking Little Traverse Bay. We live a few blocks out of the small downtown area, and if you squint really hard through trees after the leaves fall off in autumn, you can see the water from our house. But we’re WAY up on the hill which forms the town. That’s a bummer during the winter, because sometimes the roads get icy and it’s difficult to make it up the hill to our house. Basically, I’m saying town is down a very steep hill, and our house is up that same hill if you’re coming from town. And tonight, I took my bike to town.
In fact, I went all the way to the waterfront, and down several miles of bike path along the shore of Lake Michigan. It was beautiful. Using pedal assist, the eBike will easily zoom along at 20MPH, regardless of how hard to pedal. So I was just leisurely pedaling and cruising with the cool breeze whipping through my green hair. Then, I met a new friend. His name was E007.
Error 007 is a bit of a jerk. I didn’t know anything about him when he first showed up to my bike ride, but googling him shows that he tends to appear when there is a, “motor fault” on your eBike. Unfortunately, the few recommendations on getting rid of my buddy E007 involved taking apart the “guts” of the bike and making sure it was all plugged in. I did take it all apart (seriously, having a Swiss Army Knife with a Phillips screwdriver is AWESOME), but everything was indeed plugged in.
So I was stuck with no assist on my pedal-assist bike. Which brings me to the little bit of information that hasn’t been relevant until now. The Lectric XP eBike weighs as much as an aircraft carrier. And while technically it does function as a pedal-only bike, that word “technically” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Imagine putting pedals on a Sherman Tank. The only resemblance to riding a bike as a 12yr old is if the 12yr old were having one of those nightmares where you feel like you’re running through pudding.
Also, gentle reader, perhaps the part of the story where I described the elevation difference between my house and the waterfront might make a bit more sense now too. I had to pedal that monster ALL THE WAY HOME.
“But Shawn, just call someone to come pick you up!”
Alas, everyone in my family was gone. That’s why I took a solo bike ride. I was alone, and everyone was at work or home with their own families. So yes, I put the electronics back together, and E007 and me pedaled.
An hour later, and I’m home. Every part of me hurts. There may have been times during the ride when I feared my quadriceps might actually burst into flame, but thanks to the constant dripping of sweat from my head and torso, any potential fires were smothered before igniting.
I don’t like eBikes anymore. At least not today. And yet, in the back of my mind I can still feel the joy of zipping along the lakeshore at 20MPH, with the wind trying to tug off my pink baseball cap. Today could have been a lot worse.