Our new rides

I mentioned a couple of times that our friends, Allen and Donna, collected a couple of packages for us -- the packages were our new Lectric XPremium Ebikes! (https://lectricebikes.com/)

We (when I say "we" in this paragraph, read "mostly Carl") have been looking at Ebikes for several years... we learned a lot about the terminology associated with them, looked into companies that make them; we've ridden a number of different ones, determined features we liked and did not like, and features that we thought we needed.

We enjoy exercising using bike riding, but, we do NOT like riding up hills. Although we would research routes before riding them, we would sometimes encounter hills that we just could not pedal up... it just is no fun pushing a bike up a hill... we wanted Ebikes to flatten the hills, or, at least, to flatten the uphills!

We determined that hub drive Ebikes (the most common in low end prices) were not comfortable to us. The hub drive motors have cadence-sensor assist: in pedal-assist mode, you start pedaling, and then, seemingly all-of-a-sudden, the motor kicks in, making the bike seem to jerk forward - which would then cause me to stop pedaling, which would stop the pedal-assist, and the bike would slow down to where I'd start pedaling again, the pedal-assist would kick in, jerk, I'd stop pedaling, pedal-assist stops -- you get my drift. We kept on thinking, "Ok, we could learn to deal with this." People who own them say that they get used to it. Probably we could... 

Then, when we were in Yuma, we rode an Electra Townie mid-drive Ebike - oh wow - was that ever a nice bike! Mid-drive motors have torque-sensor assist; in pedal-assist mode, they "sense" how "hard" you are pedaling and provide the appropriate amount of assistance. When we rode the Townie, it just seemed that there was a nice person gently pushing the back of your bike, giving additional help as we were riding - no uncomfortable sudden fast assistance that would take us off-guard. The mid-drive motor drives from the sprocket, just like your feet do when you're pedaling. (https://electra.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/bikes/electra-bikes/electra-e-bikes/c/EB200/)

I have an Electra Townie conventional 7-speed bike that I have loved riding -- I love the fact that it is a "cruiser" - designed so your feet can be flat on the ground when you stop, but still the correct leg extension when pedaling. The one we tried was gently used by the bike shop owner, and the price was good... the only difficulty was, how would we carry it? It was a full sized bike. Ebikes, due to their weight, cannot be carried on a bike carrier on which the bikes hang by the frame, they must be supported under the tires. We have a bike carrier in the container in Virginia that carries that way, but we're not sure it would be able to support the weight of two Ebikes (they are usually 65 pounds or heavier). In addition, our current conventional bikes are getting beaten up by the weather as they are stored outside and carried on the back of the motorhome or Jeep all the time... we didn't want to treat new Ebikes this way. And... then there is the concern of theft... All those considerations made us realize that we would want to carry the Ebikes inside the back of the Jee-rage, which definitely impacted the choice. We measured and measured trying to figure out how we could fit a full-sized bike into the back of the Jeep; we determined that we would have to take the front tire off of the bike, maybe the handlebars, maybe the seat.... if we did all that, would we hesitate to even use it because it would take too much effort to get it put back together? We decided to pass on the Townie Ebike, and we decided that we would need folding Ebikes.

So, Carl continued doing research -- in campgrounds, we see a lot of different Ebikes. We'd ask questions of each owner, learning a little each time. For example, when we were at Soledad Canyon near Acton, CA, our neighbors had mid-drive Ebikes - but a difference compared to the Townie, they also had a throttle, in addition to pedal-assist. I initially thought, "I don't want a throttle, I want to pedal, I just want a gentle assist sometimes." But the lady shared with me times that she likes using the throttle - to get started from a stop, for example to get across an intersection quickly, and to help with "pushing" the bike in times that you have to walk it from one place to another, say if you're on a crowded boardwalk and need to walk your bike a ways to get to a more clear area - at 65+ pounds, pushing these is not necessarily easy - you can walk beside it and just give a little throttle to roll the bike along.

We would specifically see a lot of Lectric Ebikes around campgrounds - they have foldable bikes - helpful for travelers. And, the company is headquartered in Phoenix, so maybe they are more prevalent in the southwest. The owners seemed to be pleased with their bikes and the company.

At the end of April, Lectric came out with their first *mid-drive* Ebike. They sent some out to RVer video-bloggers for them to share their impressions. It seemed to us that Lectric had come out with precisely the bike we had been looking for, and they were offering a pre-order special -- for shipping in June. In May, we decided to order two of them for our birthday presents to each other! We were looking forward to getting them in June...

Well... Lectric had some supply chain issues, and the company did not receive the bikes to start shipping them out until mid-July. We had originally planned to have them go to the home of friends who live near Coos Bay, Oregon... but we were way past there by the time they were actually going to be shipped. We contacted Allen and Donna, and they were so gracious to allow us to ship them to their daughter's home near Yakima, Washington.

Shipping weight (in the box) was 88 (!!!) pounds for each bike. Allen and his son-in-law got the two boxes into the back of Allen's pickup truck, where Allen kept them until we arrived on Sunday. We had thought that we might be able to put both bikes, still in their boxes, into the back of the Jeep, but that wasn't going to fit, so we took them out of the boxes and put them, still all wrapped up for shipping, in the back of the Jeep until Monday afternoon.

Our "simulation" of taking them out of the box (we kept one of the boxes to use as protection between the bikes in the back of the Jeep and just put it over the wrapped up bike for the picture...)

All wrapped up in foam and cardboard and zip-ties.

Starting to take the packaging off -- other new owners have reported 45 minutes just to get all the packing material removed!

Carl working on one bike, I was working on the other.

About 20 minutes later, Carl has his unwrapped!

They were shipped with a minimal amount of air in the tires, so Carl put air in up to the recommended pressure.

The handlebars with the display...

... closeup of the display - the batteries had some charge in them, but were not fully charged ("Energy Bar"). Enough to ride around the campground...

Ready for our first ride!

The bundle of heavy-duty cable ties that we preserved as we took them off!

We didn't actually get pictures during our very first ride - we were trying the new features out and trying to get comfortable on them. Carl's needed some adjustment to the derailleur, and he wanted to look up some information on how to do that... On Tuesday, we improvised a "bike stand" to hold the back end off the ground while he adjusted the gears and worked the pedals by hand -- he seemed to improve it significantly. Then he went out on another test drive...

Now it was working oh, so much better!

We had not gotten my bike out of the Jeep, so I rode his bike around the campground loop once.

Carl was SO happy with it working as it should!

We are anticipating being able to enjoy many rides that we may have avoided in the past, now knowing that we'll have just that little bit of additional assist if we need it!

There will be more bike pictures over the next days, I'm sure, but, I wanted to give some of the back-story on our decision making process as well as showing you our new rides!