Black E-bike is the new Orange Hybrid

 The title of this post originally had the colors reversed, but an image search confirmed my suspicion: black is by far the dominant e-bike color.  Hybrid pigments lean this way too, but by my un-quantified glance, they are the more colorful option of the two bike types.  Sometimes good guys don't wear white?  And yes, hardcore DC props to anyone who recognizes that allusion!

Years ago, Peter Weigle bemoaned the trend of up and coming frame builders to paint their bikes black.  In his evaluation, choice of that "color" indicated the builder "just gave up".  Keep in mind, Peter is one of the few who does his own painting rather than outsourcing the task, so he has a unique relationship to the finish, and yes, he is the best kind of perfectionist.  If he felt he could do better by mining and smelting his own iron ore, I suspect he would.  I like Peter and I do lean toward agreeing with him generally, and definitely in this case of hue.  I like colorful bikes and more specifically am befuddled by the tendency toward dark tones for urban utility bikes.  Call me crazy, and you could likely come up with a few reasons for that, but when riding with lots of traffic, I don't particularly want my bike to blend in.

An e-bike, however, is far more than a coat of paint.  The best thoughts I've read on the subject came from Dave Wiens, one of the IMBA heads, and lucky for me, a former teammate.  Dave started the article regarding IMBA's stance on electric mountain bikes with, "Have you ridden an e-bike?  They're really fun!"  This cutting directly, succinctly, and elegantly through fluff to a key idea is classic Dave.  At the last race of the season the year before we met, he was interviewed on the start line by Penny Davidson.  She pointed out that, despite entering the finals a handful of steps away from the top slot, there was a "mathematical possibility" that he could end the race as national champion, to which Dave replied, on national television, "Yes Penny, and there's also a mathematical possibility monkeys could fly out my butt."  Yeah, I like Dave.

And I liked the ideas that he presented about e-bikes, foremost that there are few easy answers to the myriad of questions relating to them.  For now, I'll simplify my task by ignoring Dave's and IMBA's focus and instead address e-bikes on paved surfaces.  To begin, despite my affinity for old bikes and my not laudatory bemusement of the bike industry's lauding of the the latest thing, I think e-bikes definitely have their place, and I don't even mean an e-waste dumpster.  For a friend who used to commute twelve miles to work, but stopped when a change in jobs bumped that distance to twenty miles, I'd suggested an e-bike as a viable alternative for covering the distance in a time acceptable to someone whose schedule includes time spent with a then newborn son, but no, nothing says good parenting like contributing to the destruction of the planet your child will need to survive.  And yes, I've proffered that analysis to him directly, but work calls him an attorney, so you might imagine he's more than ready with a counter argument, even if this jury of one still votes guilty.

E-biking, in comparison to gasoline, or even electric, car-ing, makes a lot of sense to me.  Back when I was a productive member of society, I lived close enough to my employment to ride a bike there, which was handy since a couple years after starting, I sold my car after putting less than a thousand miles on the odometer the last year.  Riding to work was great for many obvious reasons, but the one I appreciated most was how I'd feel after the ride.  Others would arrive in the morning groggy, drinking coffee, trying to goad their bodies into the day, but I'd be well awake, heart rate slightly elevated, enthused, and ready to work!  Keep in mind, in the US, heart disease is credited with roughly twenty more fatalities each year than even automobiles, so when you add in the environmental benefits, keeping two birds alive with one bicycle shaped stone seems like a not-at-all-stout perk!

Yet as those of you who know me will fail to hear with a lack of surprise, I do have a few gripes, but I also hope you're not surprised to hear I recognize those are MY GRIPES and not some truthful edict delivered with authority, and I hope this isn't simply me being a grumpy old curmudgeon, like my lawyer friend who just can't see himself on an e-bike, and happens to be ten years my junior.

Since the accident, in additionally to hopefully appearing a bit brighter in my hi-viz vest, I've more frequently been routing myself along the off street rail trails even when they aren't the quickest route.  I'd rather be a couple minutes late than the late Salem Mazzawy.  The rail trails are a great resource, but they are also the source of much of my e-bike angst.  I've heard murmurs of a e-bike speed limit on the Norwattuck Trail, and this may even be in effect, but in it's role as second class transportation structure, the trail has no posting of speed limit signs.  Really, speed in and of itself is not my complaint, but rather the pathway to that speed.  Yes, on a road bike, I can exceed the maximum speed of most e-bikes, and no, I'm not bemoaning someone achieving that rate without a lot of hard work, but in the time it took me to achieve that speed with my legs, I rode a bike a lot.  That's a lot of practice not just pedaling, but also controlling a bike, as well experience appreciating just how that speed is perceived by other trail users on foot.  A big educational push by mountain biking groups like IMBA was getting riders to understand that what might feel like slowing to pass a hiker might still seem really fast to that person on foot.  When I pass other trail users, I slow a little and actually verbally let them know I'm about to pass, two practices I believe many of the trail users on e-bikes could do well to learn.

And since I've excused myself by explaining that these are personal dislikes, not truths, I'll complain about another e-bike trend: the electric fat bike.  Have you ridden a fat bike?  They're fun, and if your gait isn't as ridiculously narrow as mine, you can probably ride one more than once a year without your knees protesting the wide pedaling stance.  You also probably don't want to follow in my nor my father's cross country ski tracks, and you might not end trail runs with quite so many mud stains on the insides of your calf from your other shoe not quite clearing.  But this gripe mostly isn't just my angst about not being able to join the fat bike fray, it's about efficiency.  While I truly appreciate that electric assist can make the bike a viable alternative to the car for covering distances, does that pedaling help justify using the SUV paradigm as our bicycle transportation role model?  Let's not entirely lose the grace of the bicycle as the most efficient mode of transportation just because we hung an electric motor on it.

One more final, for now, nail in my grumpy old man coffin: bikes with radios.  Years ago, I joined two friends on a larger group ride which included a radio.  It was a wonderful ride on lots of back byways and trails in southern Connecticut, but once we separated from the main group to head home, everyone in my cadre had the same comment, "What's with the radio?"  We three agreed, a good outing in the outdoors on a bike can stand on its own, without needing auditory distraction.  Be in your environment.  Yes, I know regular old pedal bikes can be likewise encumbered with radios that share the owner's musical tastes whether you appreciate them or not, but there does seem a significant correlation between e-bikes and e-music.  If anyone want's to play a harmonica or banjo on their ride, ok yes, I'll endorse that.

So, have I ridden an e-bike? Yes.  Was is fun? Yes.  But.  For an arse like me, there's always a but.  Other friends of mine, a couple, live about twelve miles from her work in admissions at UMass.  She would periodically pedal to work, but with an e-bike now, that is now her primary commuter vehicle and she now arrives more quickly and less sweaty than I do most places.  They had me try their pedal assist bike a couple years ago, and yes, I was faster with a lot less effort, but my main "but" was the system's transition to adding assist as I pedaled out of a corner.  My riding techniques are maybe a little less than common, and I'm willing to lay a bike a little more resolutely into a corner than many, but I usually survive this by then applying torque to the pedals to help stand the bike back upright.  It works, but the slight delay in assist felt unsettling when I used this technique to right the e-bike back onto a straight line.  I had used the same application of power to settle a car when I drove, and the delay of an automatic transmission when it would shift in response to throttle opening on the exit of a corner was my number one (granted, among many) gripe that kept me from owning "slush box".  Most people drive automatics without complaint, so I suspect most people would also happily ride an e-bike unaware of this power delivery nuance.

So, do I want electric assist?  Yes, but true to form, not in a form that is currently offered, exactly, to my knowledge.  I want to build an e-bike-trailer.  I think e-bikes are terrific commuter tools, but without a job, I'm without a commute, and I do generally have a bit more free time than most to get where I'm going locally.  It is for longer trips, like the 170 miles to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, when being able to cut my transit time comfortably from two days to one would be a big boon.  Take a look for an e-bike with that range, or double, assuming I'd like to come home.  Did you find one?  Seriously, if you did let me know, but more likely no.  Now a trailer, in addition to a huger battery, it could also carry a small generator, which would give me range until the gas pumps ran dry.  So yeah, what I really want is an e-bike "hybrid", and sure, orange would suit me just fine.