ebikeblog.org

Just a quick note to let you know I aint’nt dead! The eBike lifestyle was on hold for a little while as I moved my base for the time being from Perth to Melbourne! The great thing about Melbourne is that it’s a very cycle friendly city, and so far I’ve just been walking everywhere - soon that is about to change as my partner joins me here in early January, and we will have eBikes as our sole method of transportation. Look for posts to come in the very near future about great eBike rides around Melbourne. I’m really looking forward to getting back into the saddle again!

I will also be hosting Carnival of the Green as the first host in 2008, which I knew was coming up but the submissions are now coming in so I am gearing up to get the blog active again after this quiet time. Any posts or issues you’d be interested in me featuring, especially in eBike and transportation news, let me know!

I don’t make frivolous posts often here, actually, this may be the first time. But this page on the “Starlight 78 Bicycle Lighting System” is quite hilarious. NSFW. Yes, really. Beware all the nekkid womens.

As mentioned in my last post, I decided to buy a Trikke. It arrived a couple of weeks ago, and it took me at least a week to find a day dry enough to ride it home from work - we’ve had a ton of rain here! I’m glad I didn’t just take it out for a short spin instead though, because I think without giving this little HPV a bit of time, I would have given up. I’ve now done two trips to and from the city and an afternoon’s riverfront casual riding with friends on rollerblades. It’s a neat little toy, nowhere near as efficient as good rollerblades or a bicycle, and certainly not as energy efficient as an ebike by a long shot - yet a really fun experience once you become accustomed to the very different motion; more like ski-ing than anything else, though I’ve yet to ski it definitely looks similar. It’s not got the freedom or the reach of rollerblades, at least, the smaller [and cheaper] Trikke6 I decided to go for didn’t. I imagine the bigger models may have better gliding capability - this one I got for a steal on eBay though, and may consider buying a bigger one in future, especially if I can find one cheaper than the standard $400 odd dollars…

Here’s a tiny video I just uploaded to youtube, to give you an idea what fun we had on Saturday:

And because this post has had very little ebike content, I should mention that I needed to have my rear wheel respoked by Chris a few weeks back. The spoking pattern put in initially wasn’t as strong as it could be, and the new pattern hopefully will be much more robust. The GL-2 is a hefty motor though, and because of its shape, is a bit trickier to spoke than motors with a smaller diameter. Here’s pic of Chris respoking:

I am looking forward to getting out and about tomorrow, I’ve been a lazy thing about fixing a puncture: my least favourite bike job, even though it’s not really that hard I will procrastinate for far too long if I have other transport options available.

Just want to mention a really good post I just read [once again posted to CM-Melb] about the mentality we have in most western countries of being completely car-centric in our attitudes to transport: Car-head (Bicycle Neglect #1).

Even as a committed 2-wheeler of all kinds for nearly all my life, I know I often feel the same regarding cars: I still ride in them semi-regularly despite not having owned one for 99% of my life, and I am not hugely surprised or even particularly offended when drivers are completely oblivious. I largely attribute my *touch wood* lack of accidents on motorcycle, scooter bike and ebike to never expecting drivers to see me or consider my road rights, and to ride like I am completely invisible to any potential approaching vehicle, especially any larger than me. That and, of course, I am a complete wuss and never have been into riding any sort of bike just for the thrill: it’s always been about getting from a-b and not killing myself on the process.

But it begs a very important question: why should we think that way? Why are cars considered the default and ruling vehicle choice? As the energy crisis looms, we will find it less and less a feasible default means of transportation, and that will mean a big mentality change for everyone unless technology steps in with very clever LEVs on a mass scale. And why should we wait anyway? I would love to be in one of the European cities where it is normal for bikes to be everywhere, where helmets aren’t legislated [and there are less accidents because there are more bikes, thus less need for the things anyway] and people get around on bikes as a matter of course.

Unfortunately, cities started since the advent of car culture are designed around the damn things, so pretty obviously - we will need to redesign these cities before we can redesign our attitudes.

In other news, the Cassidy Express is on loan to my pal Mal, and I’m happy to see it being in action again instead of sitting lonely and locked up in the laundry. And I’m thinking of getting a Trikke, too. Not electric [though they make a rather cute electric bike called the Trikke Bikke which you could probably get away with taking with you on public transport - it’s *tiny*!] but looks like a hell of a fun HPV. And I hardly ever use my rollerblades any more.

Posted recently on the CM-Melb list was this great idea which is getting some Sydney media: The Bike Bus. It seems to be a particularly Australian and even more Sydney-centric idea, which is understandable as Melbourne does tend to have much better bike lanes than Sydney so the need would not be as great. In the US and the UK, the term seems only to refer to a bus that takes bicycles, which is cool, but I like the bikebus concept here: it means a scheduled group bicycle commute.

One particularly strident argument I hear against cycle commuting is the danger inherent in riding in heavy traffic during rush hour on roads with no bike lanes in areas where traffic is not friendly towards bicycles. I am thinking of some major arterial roads in my own city, but even more so in many parts of the USA. Safetly in numbers is definitely improved, and taking up a full lane, while it does slow down traffic to a degree, is something traffic other than bicycles should be getting more accustomed to, because research has proven [pdfs] that the more cyclists there are on the road, the less accidents happen.

I would love to see this idea grow. If you are in an area where you think you might want to start one, there’s some guidelines on how to over here. I’m lucky, I live along a rail line with an excellent bicycle path for 90% of my commute, but many people are not so fortunate, and this could be a great way for individual cyclists to ride more safely and also more socially. And with ebikes, the weaker riders can easily keep up with the stronger ones, keeping the overall speed higher and more competitive time wise for those who don’t want to ride at a slower “social” pace to get to work.

So rode down to Fremantle today to see my accountant. Had planned to ride back via a supplier on the south side of the river and visit a friend but the accountant took so long I ran out of time.

Nearing Fremantle I rode past not one, but two, petrol powered bikes, they had stickers on them and I got the impression they may have been hired, but I was in a hurry so didn’t stop to ask. I got to Fremantle in about 4.5 AH, and in about 40 minutes from the CBD [20km distance= average speed 30kph, which means I must have been cruising at around 35 to account for traffic lights & other stops/slowdowns]. Not bad eh!

On the way home I managed to run into a guy on the corner of Barrack St waiting for the lights to change who had an old currie chain drive [I think?] on his rear wheel. Hi random ebiker if you are reading! [I gave my blog details ;)]

Not only that, but who should ride into view just as we were chatting? Chris! He had a replacement charger for me too, so it was a most fortuitous and exciting meeting - there are so few ebikers in Perth still, and it’s truly exciting meeting any others randomly. I complained about the petrol powered bikes, and lamented the difficulty of getting friends to even borrow a bike to see what they’re like. But we are agreed that electric bikes are aaaaaalmost at that critical point of becoming adopted widely in western countries We just have to get people to try them!

Picked up a new ebike today - well, new to me Chris decided he wanted to sell one of his, and instead of getting a new bike and having him spoke in one of the GL2s he has lying around, given that I won’t be here for too many more months, I thought I may as well take the easy option with a cheapie bike. As the batteries I’d ordered before I even put my hand up for the Suitable Transport ride had just come in on Friday, Chris tested and put everything together so I could pick it up this afternoon. Yay! Now on the ST ride I did notice a difference in the performance of the NiMHs versus the lithiums: I liked that the NiMHs didn’t have a cutout and go kersplatt dead on ya, but they didn’t have quite same vavoom when fully charged. Not a huge difference mind: and would make less difference on my old bike being a direct drive and only 24 volt as opposed to this 48 volt baby :))) Very impressed with the improved torque over when I borrowed it with NiMHs a couple weeks ago. Shame the lithiums are quite so expensive, but I think totally worth it

The GL2 is so smooth and climbs hills so well I am thinking it’s probably got a touch more torque than the eZee Torq… but I’d need to compare them side by side to be sure. Maybe I will take it over to Melbs, or get the Torq shipped here so I can do just that!

Sorry… haven’t posted specific pics and commentary on the ride, work has swallowed me up. If you were on the ride and you’re reading this, where are your pics???

Just a random pic taken before the rain began on Day 8.

More commentary & selected pics tomorrow or soonish after. Have uploaded all pics to the gallery, but they are not all sorted, nor do they have captions. If you were on the ride, you won’t need them, and if not, well, you can extrapolate for the meantime.

… and I’ve only just got around to downloading photos from my phone to my pc! I couldn’t do any pic uploading easily in Sydney, and as soon as I returned home work engulfed me, so this has been the first moment I’ve had to look through everything and start to try and take stock and process.

And it’s made me realise that it’s taken me a week to re-adjust and think about the ride in a rational way.

We really did an amazing thing. As I scroll through my photos I am having moments of memory far more vivid than on other trips or journeys. Everything in retrospect is framed with an aura of hyperreality. The trip exhausted me far more than I expected, and I know for at least the second half I was really dog tired every day, and my mind was far from its’ best. But looking back I am reminded of what we achieved and how important I think the event will come to be in retrospect. I really look forward to the doco coming together.

But in the meantime, I’ll be uploading all the pics I can to a new gallery here, and start uploading to youtube as well, with more blog posts to follow with my favourite pics and perspectives of the trip. First two vids are up, from the launch:

More on the way!