Okay, so yesterday I rode the bike to town, really and no cheating, 23 mile round trip. Took the slightly shorter but hilly way to the county road and the long slightly less hilly way home from it.
Long downhill coast after this part…
There was no special reason to do it but a round trip to town has become the White Whale of having the ebike: I’ve done every part of the trip several times now, carefully measuring mileage and estimating power use and how hard it is on the bike and my ass, but I had never just done the whole thing. And now I have, and …
…the bike finds it no problem at all as long as I don’t go nuts treating it like a motorcycle. I have to do my part with the pedals, and especially I have to work getting it up hills. Keep the power assist off the high setting except when it’s super steep and your leg(s) is/are giving out, don’t think the throttle is going to do all the work, and I can easily believe this thing will routinely go 40 miles on flat pavement. I went 23 miles on hilly dirt roads almost exclusively and used about 60% of the battery power as far as I can tell from the not very precise power bar.
Also, ow my ass. That aspect alone was worth putting a couple of hundred miles on the bike before getting expeditiony.
Anyway – since I had no particular reason to be in town on Sunday morning I decided to treat myself with something I’ve thought of many times but never have leisure to do: I went into the little town’s one tiny breakfast diner to have somebody else cook me breakfast. And because I haven’t done that in … hell, over a decade … I went full Mr. Suburban Man and got the big one. You know, the one inevitably named The Rancher or something like that, with 3 kinds of meat, 2 kinds of bread, big pile of potatoes and 3 eggs. When I was younger and seriously worked for a living I used to destroy one of those 2-3 times a week and ask for more toast.
This time it became an ordeal by food. I was determined to get through it even though I knew right away I’d wasted money on a mistake, but I ended up leaving food on the table and riding a bicycle home in the wind with a painfully distended stomach.
I can’t eat the way I used to. Probably a good thing.
But for the record the bike has finally done the one big thing I’ve talked about for the last ten months, all in one go, and had no trouble with it at all.
Joel,
Now that you are a biker boy, go on over to the Adaptive Curmudgeon blog to read his so far 5 part
story The Posiden Adventure.
Amusing.
No guessing required. You ARE getting older. Every time I look in a mirror and see my grandfather looking back at me or start a chore I should easily accomplish in two hours then stop to rest after three hours with the job not yet done I’m reminded of my age
Nice, I’m glad to see that the bike trip worked out well.
I understand exactly what you’re writing about when you talk about getting older and eating less because I’m in the same boat. Twenty years ago, you would never have seen me asking for a doggy bag, but now it’s a regular part of dining out for me.
Next time you are taken to a big town for a shopping trip, try to pre-locate an actual bike shop or hit the bike forums and see what better seats are out there for a person in your situation.
There’s some really nicely padded and sprung touring seats that also don’t numb your nads or scrotum and provide you with better support for your back and butt.
If you can go into a bike shop, that would give you the chance to ask and maybe test out or at least finger seat varieties.
Bikes are like guns. The basic version works, but there’s always some upgrade or add-on that can enhance the performance of the machine.
Padding isn’t the necessary the best thing in bicycle seats, it can lead to friction, chafing, and worse. Brooks saddles have a huge following and they’re nothing more than leather on a frame. Getting a saddle that matches the geometry of one’s pelvis well enough is the real challenge even if you don’t live in the boonies. Then one has to make adjustments to position it optimally on one’s bike which is usually a series of incremental changes in height, angle, and fore/aft.
I can mail you an Ergon SMC4 saddle if you want to try another, it didn’t fit my sit bones. Also going unused are their GP1 cork grips which I liked but they don’t work with my new handlebar.