When we moved to Lindon in 2005, it was the Murdock irrigation canal. On our back property line in Lindon, the marvelous 18 mile long Murdock bike trail now runs from Provo Canyon to the Point-of-the-Mountain in Lehi. In Lindon, UT, we live at the foot of 11,752 ft Mt Timpanogos. With an extra battery that I carried on carrier attached to my seat post, I could now do the Alpine Loop. It is my only e-bike with a throttle, which my grandchildren love. (See the photos of me riding the white Emotion bike and others of me pulling a trailer with my grandchildren in 2014, 2015.) It has no suspension, caliper brakes, the battery in the down-tube. It is almost an electric road bike with quite narrow hybrid-width tires. My first e-bike: In 2014, I purchased an Easymotion Emotion 27 speed Class 3 28 MPH rear-hub powered e-bike. However, after riding my carbon fiber road bike again recently, I was reminded that it is true that with full assist, you don’t get the same aerobic workout climbing steep hills as you do with a solely human-powered bike. I generally ride at least 20 miles and 90 minutes every day about 4 miles off-road and I get a good workout. In those early days when another biker would finally realize that I was riding an electric bike, they would say: Why are you riding an e-bike, don’t you ride a bike for exercise? I could never convince them, but I would say, “if you want more exercise, you just reduce the assist level.” In fact, if you reduce it to zero, you get more exercise than you want because you are pedaling a big heavy bike. I had a big success with my grandson in 2015 when I took him to a big empty parking lot, gave him a little push, and he rode off like he had been doing it for years. Over the years, I have taught a number of my children and grandchildren how to ride a bike. Some people are human dynamos and can do these things without a problem, but they are show stoppers for the rest of us.īig win for grandpa and grandson first time with no training wheels in Lindon, Utah. It also makes pulling your kids or grandkids in a bike trailer a breeze rather than a miserable chore. I was soon to learn the advantages of an electric bike: They virtually eliminate the problems with the things you hate most about biking: Going up steep hills (in some areas, steep hills make regular bikes impossible for most people), biking into a strong headwind, and making that trip that is longer than your comfortable range. However, I got some test rides and I was hooked. They weren’t for sale, and Cannondale wasn’t even supporting them in the US. They were European demos from a bike show. In 2013, I walked into a bike store in American Fork Utah where the owner had picked up two Cannondale e-bikes. I ride my e-bike almost every day and estimate that I have ridden almost 20,000 e-bike miles over the last seven years. I started riding e-bikes and bought my first electric car at about the same time in 2014. Now is the story about how over the last seven years I learned about the different types of electric bikes and what type of riding each is suited for. This was a revelation to me and I now spend at least 20% of my riding off-road. You can ride off-road single-track trails. You can veer off the pavement onto the shoulder and most likely just ride back up to the pavement. You can drop off a curb or hit one and hardly notice it. Going to an e-bike, you can have wide mountain bike tires, full suspension, and disk brakes and gain not two or three percent but a 500% assist to your muscles (from the motor). Forget riding for even a short run on gravel, it is miserable. Driving off pavement is asking for a thorn and a flat. Also, if you hit a curb or drop off a curb, you could also be in big trouble. You still have a bike with very narrow hard tires that ride well only on very smooth pavement, and if you happen to veer off the pavement onto gravel, dirt, or grass, you are likely to have an unhappy ending. Problem: Many people spend thousands of dollars for extremely light carbon fiber bikes and wheels with deep fairings to gain only a percent or two in efficiency. Fabulous Motobecane carbon fiber road bike with Shimano Di2 electric shift in Zion National Park.
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