My New Trek Valencia+

"Bill" wrote in message
...
God, I would never ride one of those stupid things. I find them
ludicrous. Why won't people simply get in shape instead? Americans are
always looking for shortcuts to everything. It makes me sick. Screw
electric bicycles.

You're right, Americans should get into shape. But we have infrastructural
barriers here that don't exist elsewhere, because we did a really poor job
laying out our cities. Partly reactionary to coming over from Europe, where
things were relatively "crowded" so here we sprawl. Our cities aren't built
with most of their housing within a short walk of a bakery or even a small
grocery store. Our roads are built to "go places" rather than facilitate
getting things done by foot or bike. And our terrain in many urban areas is
a whole lot hillier than what you find in many countries with a very high
percentage of people walking or riding for short trips instead of driving.

So to some extent the e-bike is a fix for some of our self-created problems.

HOWEVER- the e-bike phenomenon is hugely more popular in europe, especially
Germany, than it is here. That doesn't seem to fit in with your views
though, so it must not be true. Or maybe it's Americans, Germans & Dutch all
looking for shortcuts? Who do you see that we should be looking to for role
models?

--Mike Jacoubowsky
Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReaction.com
Redwood City & Los Altos, CA USA

On Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:33:13 -0700 (PDT), Bill
wrote:

God, I would never ride one of those stupid things. I find them
ludicrous. Why won't people simply get in shape instead? Americans are
always looking for shortcuts to everything. It makes me sick. Screw
electric bicycles.

How old are you Bill? I'm nearing 60, and I commute 15 miles each way
on a bike. But my knees just don't like long hills anymore. And I've
never been fast, but now it takes me around 1:20 each way. That's
almost three hours spent biking, and it's too much.

So, I can stop biking and just drive to the train, like I do on
miserable mornings like today (heavy rain through tomorrow). Or, I can
move closer to the job, though that would cost a lot of money. Or,
hmm. I can get a bike that will level those hills a bit for me, and
speed me up a bit so I can sleep 20 minutes later each morning.

Hey Bill, let me know if you're still biking when you turn 50.

On Mar 17, 8:52*am, dgk wrote:
The + means that it has a hub motor and battery. I got it because I'm
closing in on 60 and have a 30 mile (r/t) commute. The hills and
headwinds have been combining to make it unpleasant lately so I
figured that I'd find a way to make it more fun.

Well, this bike sure does make it more fun. There's no throttle; it
only works in Pedal Assist mode. The controller allows me to select
anywhere from no assistance to 200% assistance. It will not work at
all if I'm not pedaling. I didn't want a moped, I wanted a bike that
gave me the equivalent of a 20 mile (r/t) commute.

I went up the Queensboro Bridge at around 16 mph. My normal speed up
that thing is 8 mph and that's while I invent new words. I got to work
so fast that I had to kill time because I can't bring the bike up to
my office before the freight elevator starts working at 8am.

Killing time was interesting. One of the neat things about the bike is
that there are also four regeneration modes that let you charge the
battery, sort of like a Prius but hopefully without a recall. I kept
it on the lowest regen setting and biked along at normal speed for the
last few miles. It's sort of like a Spinning bike; I can set the regen
mode to give me more resistance. I probably got about the same
exercise as normal but more of it was on the flats and less on the
hills.

Trek used the Bionx kit as the basis for the electronics, and I'm not
sure I wouldn't have been better off just putting a Bionx kit on my
old bike. The battery Trek uses is 6.4 MA instead of 10.0 on the
normal kit. That means that the range, using mostly the lowest level
of assist, is around 30 miles instead of 45 or 50. But it's enough for
my commute - although I bought an extra charger and leave one at home
and one at the office. I understand that it isn't good for the battery
to continuously run it down.

It is very back-heavy. The standard Bionx kit puts the battery in the
center of the frame while the Trek has it on a special rear rack.
Still, it is light enough so it's still a pleasure to ride without
needing the power at all. Unlike the $500 Ebikes that use SLA
batteries and can't really be used as a regular bike, this one is a
regular bike - although at around $2400 (with tax) it isn't cheap.

So far, so good. And only possible because NYC passed a law that
forces commercial buildings to let bikes in. Thank you, NYC Council
members. I sure wasn't leaving this bike outside like my trusty old
Trek 7100.

I rode one of the Schwinns at an LBS, a year or two ago. It had the
hub motor in the front wheel and well... I didn't buy one The one I
was looking at was $2k. It was kinda weird feeling when the motor
kicked in - I didn't ride it enough to really get over the weird
part. It wasn't enough to get me back on a wedgie - so when it
happens it will be a kit, unless Rans offers one. The Schwinn package
was pretty nice with the battery integrated into the rear rack, with a
key to lock it in place. And the battery was LIGHT, 10ah that weight
about 1/3 of what the 7ah sealed lead acid that I use for lighting
does. Yeah, by the time I'm 60 I'm pretty certain I'll have some kind
of motor - something still in the sub 100lbs category.

On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:00:48 -0700 (PDT), DennisTheBald
wrote:



I rode one of the Schwinns at an LBS, a year or two ago. It had the
hub motor in the front wheel and well... I didn't buy one The one I
was looking at was $2k. It was kinda weird feeling when the motor
kicked in - I didn't ride it enough to really get over the weird
part. It wasn't enough to get me back on a wedgie - so when it
happens it will be a kit, unless Rans offers one. The Schwinn package
was pretty nice with the battery integrated into the rear rack, with a
key to lock it in place. And the battery was LIGHT, 10ah that weight
about 1/3 of what the 7ah sealed lead acid that I use for lighting
does. Yeah, by the time I'm 60 I'm pretty certain I'll have some kind
of motor - something still in the sub 100lbs category.

I looked into those because they were a bit cheaper than the Treks,
but the motor is only 250 watt and folks on the ebike forums said that
anything less than 350 is underpowered. That would probably be ok with
me since I'm used to biking a lot anyway, but the motor in the front
seemed weird.

I understand that people do get used to it, but it would be like being
pulled instead of being pushed. I was thinking that it might be like
having a gyroscope for a front wheel. Clearly is isn't, and the weight
distribution is better that way, but I went for the rear motor anyway.
Mention being unsure whether to have a front or rear hub motor in an
Ebike forum and it's like mentioning a helmet here.

A word of warning to anyone thinking of putting a kit on the front
wheel though - be very careful. The fork is not made to pull a bike
and DO NOT do it with an aluminum fork. Steel only. The fork will
break and you won't like it.

The battery is very light really. The hub motor is pretty heavy. But
the Bionx one used by Trek is the best of them; lightest and most
efficient.

On 3/22/2010 12:00 PM, DennisTheBald wrote:
[...] Rans [...]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOO!

--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007
1999 RANS Wave to Tailwind conversion
2000 RANS Rocket

On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:10:10 -0400, Peter Cole
wrote:

dgk wrote:
The + means that it has a hub motor and battery. I got it because I'm
closing in on 60 and have a 30 mile (r/t) commute. The hills and
headwinds have been combining to make it unpleasant lately so I
figured that I'd find a way to make it more fun.

....



Interesting, thanks. Keep us posted.

Today was one of those days where I biked only because I had the
assist - 25 mph wind gusting to 35. I hated that before. I woke up
around 4 am, looked at the trees blowing outside the window and went
back to bed figuring that I'd take the train. But then I got up.
looked again, and figured I'd try. It was fine.

Frankly, it's a bit unsafe with 35 mph gusts - the wind does strange
things in Manhattan because of the rivers on both sides and blocks of
tall buildings funneling the wind. It should have just been out of the
northwest but it was all over the place. Still, it was fun.