Replacing car trips with e-bikes

 "Replacing car trips with ebikes." That headline greeted me as I skimmed through the ol' inbox a few days ago.

First of all, it's a great idea. It would reduce the volume of large, boxy vehicles in traffic, although it would probably increase the overall number of vehicles. Second, it would reduce fossil fuel consumption. By extension, that would reduce tailpipe emissions. It would drastically alter the parking situation. But it would also drastically complicate the riders' lives in ways that they haven't imagined.

Motor vehicles have been the norm in this country for so long that massive support systems exist to keep them rolling. How many parts store chains can you name? NAPA, O'Reilly, VIP, AutoZone, WalMart... you can get auto parts everywhere. You can go in with pretty fragmentary information about your car and the people behind the counter can usually find what you need in their voluminous cross-reference books. No such network exists for bicycles, e- or otherwise.

Most people drive vehicles that they don't even begin to understand. Car broken! Go to mechanic! Mechanic fix! It costs a lot of money, and we often feel that the mechanic might be shady or not that competent. But at least we have options, and the mechanics -- professional or home DIY -- can get parts, tools, and manuals, as well as the ubiquitous YouTube videos.

Electric bikes have almost none of this. Not only are they a much younger technology, they come in from a scorned and neglected sector by identifying as bicycles. In addition, many companies have abysmal tech support.

Because smokeless mopeds are so popular, independent support will evolve quickly, but it's happening very unevenly. In Wolfe City and the surrounding area, smokeless mopeds have been playthings of the rich for more than a decade. For some of them it's been since the 1990s. As the category has taken off in the past few years, the opposite end of the income scale has taken to it heavily. The wealthy have had resources that the worker bees will never enjoy, including calling up the CEO of an e-bike company and getting parts sent directly as a favor, executive to executive. That ain't the real world.

A local working class e-bike user who grew up working on his own internal combustion vehicles has delved into the inner workings enough that he is considering starting an e-bike service business. We are encouraging him, because smokeless mopeds are not bicycles. They share traits in common, but the motors and electronic aspects demand knowledge that the average bike shop shouldn't be burdened to acquire.

You might say that the competitive economy presents challenges and opportunities, and that anyone unwilling to embrace this new aspect of "bicycle" evolution is a slacker and defeatist, but you would be a dick. Simple economic reality stands in the way of this idealistic vision.

Someone starting a business from scratch can decide how to expend capital to equip that business. Let's assume adequate funding to establish the business. For smokeless mopeds you will want a powered lift, or at least one with some mechanical advantage built in. Depending on your expected volume of business, you might want two or more. I have only the vaguest idea what you would need for tools to service the electrical aspects, but they aren't free.

You will need space for this operation. If you also service regular bicycles, that will probably call for a parallel service area with the usual few thousand dollars in tools and workstands, plus staffing. Smokeless mopeds being a separate genre, you can probably focus solely on them.

My car mechanic has a three-bay setup in a side-street industrial park, for just himself and an occasional assistant. Smokeless mopeds don't take up nearly as much space as cars and SUVs, but they're generally bigger than regular bikes. Just as car repair places tend to accumulate derelict hulks parked here and there around the place, so do bike shops, including smokeless mopeds. Owners abandon them over the bill, or you scavenge them for parts, or you just get tired and go home at the end of day after day and never quite get around to processing the carcasses.

Once a business is mature, and has been operating in a dying industry that went into decline right after a phase of merciless competition between retailers, it has been getting by on slim margins and a shrinking customer base for years. We have no bag of cash to finance an effective expansion into a rapidly changing market sector only vaguely related to our original core strength. It's hard enough to keep up with the ridiculous bullshit produced for pedal-only bikes.

For now, the network of commercial and private e-bike mechanics barely exists. New owners are coming in much faster than support is forming around them. The vehicles are fairly reliable, but when they fail it could leave you stranded. The rider who is considering starting a service business almost lost his storage shed and more when the battery caught fire during charging. Fortunately, someone else spotted the fire in time to knock it down before it really took off. Battery fires are the most spectacular hazard of e-bike ownership, but hardly the most common.

Electric bikes either work or they don't. An internal combustion vehicle will enjoy its youth all shiny and tight, devolving gradually through the various stages of beater car (or truck), probably passing from owner to owner in the process. But electric motors don't generally just run rough and metaphorically burn oil. They either work or they don't. If something is loose, you don't want to let it rattle for too long. If power is intermittent, you need to find out why, or risk having to pedal your 60-pound behemoth with nothing but your li'l legs. Because that's another thing that evolved to support cars and has no comparable service for bikes: towing.

E-bikes are mostly massively heavy. Batteries and motors are heavy. You can buy light e-bikes and you can buy powerful e-bikes, but you can't buy light, powerful e-bikes. This may change, but for now the lightweight materials that might help with that equation are things like titanium and carbon fiber, which have mostly appeared on high-priced bikes. Carbon fiber in particular can suffer from the abuse and neglect that most of us inflict on our daily drivers. Light, thin metal and plastic might serve to lighten cheaper bikes, but with a resulting loss of ruggedness. Things will bend and break more.

You can't blame the industry and its cheerleaders for encouraging as many consumers as possible to become test pilots for generation after generation of failed experiments. The bike industry did it with mountain bikes through the 1990s without a twinge of shame. They also destroyed their market in the process, but they raked in some good bucks for a while before the dropoff. And the evolved product really excites the few people who can afford to buy one and ride in the style that the bikes have been shaped for.

E-bikes probably won't shrink to a niche product the way mountain bikes did, but their wide variety creates a parallel universe to the categories of bicycling. The categories don't line up exactly, because the e-bike spectrum extends from very bike-like all the way to virtual motorcycles. An e-bike is a motor vehicle. Expect costs to reflect that, even if they're lower than for a car. They'll never be as low as for a nice, basic transportation bicycle.

September is Aggressive Driving Month

September Driver Aggression was a little late this year, probably because the protracted summer-like weather made it easy to forget that the month had arrived. It really hit this week, though.

One hallmark of autumnal aggression is impatience after sunset. I always get honked at more when I'm operating with the lights on, and the honks tend to be a little sharp. With the generator head and tail lights, and two additional blinkies to the rear, plus reflector leg bands, I'm not hard to see. But drivers seem pushier when they pass. This continues after September. On my route, it's worse on the secondary road between Route 16 and my home in the woods than it is on the highways or coming out of Wolfeboro.

I have not commuted anywhere but here since the late 1980s, so I don't know what other riders may experience. When I commuted year-round by bike in the Annapolis, Maryland area, between 1979 and 1987, the percentage of jerks seemed pretty stable, day or night, in any season. During my bike commuting period there, it was getting steadily more urbanized and sprawled out. Of course this new growth was designed around motor vehicles exclusively. There might be token signage and a bit of width designated for cyclists in a few places, but the motorists knew that they were the top predators in that food chain. I don't think any of my old racing buddies still ride around there anymore. When I would visit from up here, even though the motoring public actually seemed less aggressive than during the early 1980s, the traffic volume made riding stressful. To be dangerous, drivers don't have to be maliciously aggressive, just self-centered and unaware.

Drivers may think that a cyclist can't see them as well in the dark. The opposite is true: a motor vehicle has powerful floodlights on the front of it, and it still makes as much noise as ever. I hear them and I see them, or at least I see the light thrown by them.

The closer passing and increased tendency to honk make me think that drivers believe that the darkness cloaks their identity. I suppose that is somewhat true, since most people's license plate lights don't work. But I have a terrible time seeing into cars and trucks in daylight, let alone at night, because of the reflections on the glass. In a lot of developed countries, hitting a cyclist day or night is basically a freebie. They don't need to be cloaked. Reasonable doubt shines down on the whole encounter.

Since I've had close encounters in the dark even when the motorist and I were the only vehicles on a stretch of rural road with decent sight lines, I think that the darkness and seclusion might also stimulate predatory instincts in some borderline folks. And I'll bet that a lot of us are closer to that borderline than we will admit even to ourselves. A twitch of the steering wheel is all it takes to assuage a little impulsive blood lust. So a super low traffic volume is not necessarily a selling point.

I've mentioned before that I feel helplessly conspicuous, riding on a trail in the dark, with my bright lights making deep shadows outside their glare. When I don't need to be seen by others, night vision goggles would be the better choice. And here we go with another gear purchase. More likely I rely on statistical probability and just keep on with the visible illumination.

This is The Renaissance of Hate

A friend in Des Moines, Iowa, just reported that persons unknown had dumped thumbtacks all over a section of bike trail, causing the sort of damage and inconvenience you would expect.

This trail is a segregated venue. These riders are not interfering with the holy motor vehicle traffic so beloved by Americans. Spiking their trail is an act of pure malice, singling out bike riders purely for being bike riders.

We live in a time when we are actively encouraged to give way to our prejudices and express them without reservation. Close borders. Harass, intimidate, beat up, and even kill "undesirables."

Talk radio hosts have been exposed numerous times suggesting that bike riders make perfectly legitimate targets for violent slapstick comedy. They never suggest that riders should get some hazard pay and a share of the residual income from any video coverage of these actions. It goes along with every other form of entertaining contempt peddled fiercely and continuously by people who have soapboxes large and small. The comment thread on any article about bicycling in the mainstream media devolves almost immediately into a collection of traded insults. It's just one aspect of a culture of intolerance that has been growing steadily since the backlash against "hippies" in the late 1970s and early '80s. It is blossoming now with creative expression of destructive tendencies.

We're in the Renaissance of Hate, when divisions mean more to people than coexistence. A large segment of humanity inclines toward duking things out and settling them now, rather than trying to bump along, accommodating each other as best we can. Another segment does try to keep building toward a universally tolerant society, but there are many details to iron out. The human propensity for simple mindedness and quick fixes throws land mines in front of any peace march to try to shut the gentle people up and let the men of action have their way.

I use the term men of action purposely. The culture of hate is sexist. It attracts many followers who are women, but they either think they can fight it out or they buy into the classic gender roles in which men make the big moves and women support them. In general, movements of intolerance try to keep people in their rigidly defined places. Amazing how totalitarian ideas can march in under a banner of freedom. They have specific, worthy recipients in mind when they talk about freedom.

Some things are deplorable and need to be opposed. Sometimes, forcefully delivered rhetoric is not wrong. That complicates analysis for the concerned citizen. But if someone is suggesting that it's okay to target anyone for unkind treatment, that's bad advice. "Hate the sin, love the sinner" is a shorthand way to remind yourself that a broad brush and a machine gun are ham fisted solutions.

At the start of every riding season, and at intervals during it, I wonder whether hatred or negligence will strike me or someone I hold dear. It's one more thing in the back of the mind when gearing up to take a simple bike ride.

On Bike Shoes, and Separation from the World

Looking out the window at the gray sky and green leaves of a late spring day I considered where I might ride.

From a practical standpoint I do not need to go anywhere today. So what would my objectives be?

When I trained, the objective was clear and the equipment selection was obvious. I would dress for the weather and wear cycling shoes. I would strap in at the start and, barring any mechanical problems or quick visits to the woods, remain fastened to my pedals until I returned home.

The cleated rider flies above the world, separated from it by the adaptation to soaring. It is not obvious, because we ride on tires touching the ground, but we might as well be a thousand feet up. We flow with a rhythm all our own, disparate from the motorists that brush us aside and the pedestrians stolidly striding.

When I ride to the grocery store, I dress in ordinary cargo shorts or pants, and wear non-cleated shoes. The pedaling is less efficient, but it's more important to be able to walk around the store without clacking and skidding. The normal clothing also helps me blend in with my fellow citizens.

Not training, shopping or commuting, for what do I prepare?

The cleated cyclist is like one of those birds that's regal and magnificent in flight and a hopping, flapping disaster on the ground. Inset cleats popularized by mountain biking are some help, but even they can protrude enough to make footing dicey at times. Is that a good enough compromise? It is for some. And since slotted cleats are exotic and rare these days, requiring special efforts to obtain, few riders are likely to go to the trouble.

The cyclist's separation runs deeper than footwear. If I plan to stop, what security measures should I take? Every time I shop by bike I have a constant twinge of anxiety that my bike will be damaged or gone when I come out.

I have not had a bike stolen since 1971, but that was my beloved Phillips 3-speed on the first day of high school in the biggest, most urban school I had ever attended. I had ridden it as a bit of comfort and familiarity, because this was a new town and a new school and I was a tad intimidated. The theft of the bike was symbolically the removal of a chunk of my childhood that was not returned to me by the purchase of anther black, English 3-speed. The replacement never seemed to ride the same way.

Later, in college, my Peugeot 10-speed was vandalized twice. Since I was a monumentally insensitive prick in college, I could never be sure if the damage was caused by a frustrated thief who could not overcome my lock or by a girlfriend who recognized the bike and wanted to throw me a little grief. Or it could just have been someone who did not like bike riders and disapproved of my choice of parking place. You never know, as a bike rider. I'm decades down the road from having angry girlfriends, but that leaves plenty of other potential antagonists.

Thousands of people use their bikes every day without damage or loss. But on a per capita basis, I would bet cyclists suffer more damage and loss than motorists in the course of what should be routine errands. You're vulnerable on the move and vulnerable when you're parked. You're just out there, available to the judgmental emotions of any passerby.

Motorists are much more profoundly separated from their world, but much less aware of it. Because they are doing what most everyone else is doing, the fact that they're doing it sealed in a glass and metal can, hurtling at deadly speeds, crushing small life, and -- occasionally -- big life, is completely lost on them. Because what they are doing is "normal," and they can lock the vehicle to create its own security, they can move with blissful thoughtlessness. Bash, crash, hurtle and park. Shuffle on in to the emporium and shuffle on out again. Throw the bags in the back seat and hurtle away. Meanwhile, the weirdo on the bike is still unlocking, packing groceries into panniers, coiling up the lock, putting on the helmet and mounting up to exit the parking lot with the jostling multitude of canned humanity being normal.

My turn for The Chimp Report

Big G!

Don't know if you'll see this tonight, but it's too funny to risk forgetting.

The chimps were particularly bangy today. Plus they had something that made a piercing, metallic whine like a Dremel tool working on thin metal or ceramic or somebody's skull. I spent a lot of time with my ear plugs in. But they did not take the edge off the shockwave slams of whatever they would drop or throw at irregular intervals. After lunch I started banging back with an old rack bar. They had quieted down somewhat, so hopefully it startled them as I did it at irregular intervals.

Minutes after Esteban took off for practice, leaving me with the Commander, I was brushing out those hotbox skis when a voice said, "hey there! I have a delivery for you."

Twenty-two Specialized bikes. I went out into the snowy parking lot, leaving the Commander on the bridge. Of course the shop filled up. He sold hats for cash at discount prices to apologize for his ignorance of the computer system. The couple who wanted to rent he turned away. What could I do? Truck dude would have gotten impatient and dumped the remaining bikes in the street.

On one of my trips out from the basement I smelled cigarette smoke. I glanced over to see a grumpy young chimp at the tailgate of a pickup truck. He had a freshly lit cancer stick. Since he'd been sent outside to do a chore, he must have figured it was a great opportunity. The chore? Refueling their space heater. Yes, young Einstein was pouring what smelled like kerosene from a fuel can into their jet-engine heater. I started laughing and pointed him out to the truck driver, who also started laughing. The grumpy kid looked over like, "What?! What's so funny?" Then he LEANED DOWN CLOSER TO SEE HOW FULL THE TANK WAS.

Why did he not erupt into a human torch? Now he's convinced all this bullshit about not smoking while you handle fuel is just more sissy nonsense from people who don't like smoking. Well, the little Bic flicker survived...this time. He walked a lap or two around the building to finish the butt before going back in. Might have been dicey if he'd lit himself on fire, panicked and run around, lit the pickup truck and maybe careened into something else he could ignite.

Ah well...there's always tomorrow. Pleasant dreams!

Halloween tricks

Heading down from my parking spot this morning I was shooting a short video of the scenery when I spotted heavy equipment up ahead. I left the camera on for the pass.

Stuff like this illustrates why I use the mountain bike for these commutes. The Cross Check could handle the majority of conditions, but when I'm on a schedule I want to be ready for any likely complication.

Close in to town I came to the next trick for the day, this fallen tree.

The real trick is that it was still there at dusk. It had sagged lower, so I couldn't fit beneath it while pedaling. Probably no one will ride in the dark, but if they did they would pile into this thing for sure. I wrestled with it for several minutes trying to figure out some jujutsu that would let me shove it aside, but I got nowhere. Someone else's efforts may have lowered it from its morning height.

On the ride out as dusk deepened to darkness and I left behind the two or three other human beings I'd seen on the path I got a solid whiff of brimstone. Nice touch. No idea where it came from.

I rode undisturbed by human or wraith until I reached the long straight stretch of track leading to Bryant Road, where I leave the path to head up hill. Far ahead I saw a white light. I could not tell whether it was on my side of Bryant or beyond. Below it I saw a strange shimmering. I was headed toward it anyway, so I knew I would get a better look. It held my gaze the way a light in the darkness does. The upper light was no doubt someone's headlamp, but what was that wavering business down below it?

Finally I was close enough to tell that the shimmery bit was the legs of a dog walking in the edge of the high intensity light, fur gleaming silver as the legs moved. Cooool.