ebikeblog.org

Ah, xkcd, you finally have something I can post here.

I’d just like to point out that electric skateboards don’t get anywhere near the mileage of electric bikes - a good average would be anywhere from 1000 - 2000 mpg equivalent. Some weight behind that assertion can be found here, here and here…

Well, I finally got back in the saddle for a couple of days: I’m still lacking a functioning ebike in Melbourne, as one was damaged in transit from Perth, and the other I am still waiting for, apparently battery is dead, been waiting a while, but because my partner is not a keen cyclist [quite the opposite, alas] I have not as much motivation to be riding.

But being in Perth alone for a week, I have got my spare bike off my friend who’d been minding it for a few months, charged up the batteries, and … realised they needed to be charged extra after being stored for a while. Let that be a warning to you if you’re getting your bike out of storage!

My next day’s ride was unfortunately marred by a breaking chain - it’s the chain drive bike, and the chain had stretched quite a lot, so I wasn’t surprised at this development, just disappointed, as I have only 2 more days here and don’t really have time to get it fixed before I leave.

I really enjoyed the couple of trips when everything was working well, but it’s been frustrating to have things pretty much constantly be wrong with my bikes. I have three: none of the now currently functional. All I want is to ride my bike. *sigh*

Here’s hoping I can get one bike sorted in Melbourne soon: I want to be able to ride out to Brunswck at the very least, it’s only 5km from where I live, and an ebike is *much* faster than the tram!

Happy New Year eBikers, and welcome to the first post of 2008, which is a bit of a change of pace for the blog as today I am hosting Carnival of the Green, a weekly linkfest from Treehugger which travels from blog to blog, with each weeks’ host choosing the best of submitted links to discuss and feature each Monday. There has been no Carnival for two weeks over the holiday period with the last being hosted at Great Green Gadgets, and so the pressure is on with dozens of links and a brand new year to celebrate and promote being green.

As part of a range of green transport links I’ll focus on to begin with, totally on theme and early in is Joe from Green Living Online, who gives a basic round up of ebikes for getting around college in style - the big man on campus is anything with two-wheels. Students who have clued into the fact that most travel is local are turning to a variety of plugged-in options.

Of course, to power your ebike you want to use renewable energy. Go Greener, Australia has an interview with Eloise Dorch, who recently campaigned against a price rise for renewable energy in Western Australia, where the sole power retailer has a monopoly and consumers cannot choose different companies as they can in the Eastern States. It’s a travesty that coal powered electricity is still being subsidised and making it harder for those with tight budgets to chose green power, and Eloise outlines her experiences in protesting this issue.

And while the temperature here in Oz is scorching, on the other side of the planet things are pretty cold! Mike from Hybrid Car Review gives some info and advice about how cold weather affects hybrid cars. Nice to note that hybrid sales are powering ahead and the Prius was one of the top 10 cars in the US in 2007 - that’s not just hybrids, that’s all new car sales - awesome.

And while you’re feeling chilly, or even just in need of a good excuse to reduce your power bills, Brave New Leaf has some simple easy to follow tips to improve your hot water heating efficiency.

And while most of us know we need to reduce our carbon emissions from travel - Veggie Revolution brings us a brief overview of Carbon Offsets to neutralise air travel and Susan J presents carbon friendly travel options with her Environmental Guide to San Francisco posted at Go San Francisco Travel Blog.

On to recycling. Stephanie presents a frugal and cool idea: Using Scraps of Wrapping Paper, posted at Stop the Ride! and Cindy of myrecycledbags.com has a new design for a recycled knitted plastic bag doormat. Adam at lifegoggles blogs about a very funky recycled can opener, and Green Deals Daily alerts us to a recycled and recyclable plastic tumbler which is more attractive than many I’ve seen in the same price range and style.

Last but not least, Adam from lifegoggles also submitted a blog post I rather enjoyed which is a bit of a catch-all, with fun green roundup #7: a humorous look at the best of Treehugger. A diverse range of links but the minimally lit billboard is my favourite for sure.

That’s all for Carnival of the Green today. Look out for next week’s at American Inventor Spot!

Just a quick note to let you know I aint’nt dead! The eBike lifestyle was on hold for a little while as I moved my base for the time being from Perth to Melbourne! The great thing about Melbourne is that it’s a very cycle friendly city, and so far I’ve just been walking everywhere - soon that is about to change as my partner joins me here in early January, and we will have eBikes as our sole method of transportation. Look for posts to come in the very near future about great eBike rides around Melbourne. I’m really looking forward to getting back into the saddle again!

I will also be hosting Carnival of the Green as the first host in 2008, which I knew was coming up but the submissions are now coming in so I am gearing up to get the blog active again after this quiet time. Any posts or issues you’d be interested in me featuring, especially in eBike and transportation news, let me know!

I don’t make frivolous posts often here, actually, this may be the first time. But this page on the “Starlight 78 Bicycle Lighting System” is quite hilarious. NSFW. Yes, really. Beware all the nekkid womens.

As mentioned in my last post, I decided to buy a Trikke. It arrived a couple of weeks ago, and it took me at least a week to find a day dry enough to ride it home from work - we’ve had a ton of rain here! I’m glad I didn’t just take it out for a short spin instead though, because I think without giving this little HPV a bit of time, I would have given up. I’ve now done two trips to and from the city and an afternoon’s riverfront casual riding with friends on rollerblades. It’s a neat little toy, nowhere near as efficient as good rollerblades or a bicycle, and certainly not as energy efficient as an ebike by a long shot - yet a really fun experience once you become accustomed to the very different motion; more like ski-ing than anything else, though I’ve yet to ski it definitely looks similar. It’s not got the freedom or the reach of rollerblades, at least, the smaller [and cheaper] Trikke6 I decided to go for didn’t. I imagine the bigger models may have better gliding capability - this one I got for a steal on eBay though, and may consider buying a bigger one in future, especially if I can find one cheaper than the standard $400 odd dollars…

Here’s a tiny video I just uploaded to youtube, to give you an idea what fun we had on Saturday:

And because this post has had very little ebike content, I should mention that I needed to have my rear wheel respoked by Chris a few weeks back. The spoking pattern put in initially wasn’t as strong as it could be, and the new pattern hopefully will be much more robust. The GL-2 is a hefty motor though, and because of its shape, is a bit trickier to spoke than motors with a smaller diameter. Here’s pic of Chris respoking:

I am looking forward to getting out and about tomorrow, I’ve been a lazy thing about fixing a puncture: my least favourite bike job, even though it’s not really that hard I will procrastinate for far too long if I have other transport options available.

Just want to mention a really good post I just read [once again posted to CM-Melb] about the mentality we have in most western countries of being completely car-centric in our attitudes to transport: Car-head (Bicycle Neglect #1).

Even as a committed 2-wheeler of all kinds for nearly all my life, I know I often feel the same regarding cars: I still ride in them semi-regularly despite not having owned one for 99% of my life, and I am not hugely surprised or even particularly offended when drivers are completely oblivious. I largely attribute my *touch wood* lack of accidents on motorcycle, scooter bike and ebike to never expecting drivers to see me or consider my road rights, and to ride like I am completely invisible to any potential approaching vehicle, especially any larger than me. That and, of course, I am a complete wuss and never have been into riding any sort of bike just for the thrill: it’s always been about getting from a-b and not killing myself on the process.

But it begs a very important question: why should we think that way? Why are cars considered the default and ruling vehicle choice? As the energy crisis looms, we will find it less and less a feasible default means of transportation, and that will mean a big mentality change for everyone unless technology steps in with very clever LEVs on a mass scale. And why should we wait anyway? I would love to be in one of the European cities where it is normal for bikes to be everywhere, where helmets aren’t legislated [and there are less accidents because there are more bikes, thus less need for the things anyway] and people get around on bikes as a matter of course.

Unfortunately, cities started since the advent of car culture are designed around the damn things, so pretty obviously - we will need to redesign these cities before we can redesign our attitudes.

In other news, the Cassidy Express is on loan to my pal Mal, and I’m happy to see it being in action again instead of sitting lonely and locked up in the laundry. And I’m thinking of getting a Trikke, too. Not electric [though they make a rather cute electric bike called the Trikke Bikke which you could probably get away with taking with you on public transport - it’s *tiny*!] but looks like a hell of a fun HPV. And I hardly ever use my rollerblades any more.

Posted recently on the CM-Melb list was this great idea which is getting some Sydney media: The Bike Bus. It seems to be a particularly Australian and even more Sydney-centric idea, which is understandable as Melbourne does tend to have much better bike lanes than Sydney so the need would not be as great. In the US and the UK, the term seems only to refer to a bus that takes bicycles, which is cool, but I like the bikebus concept here: it means a scheduled group bicycle commute.

One particularly strident argument I hear against cycle commuting is the danger inherent in riding in heavy traffic during rush hour on roads with no bike lanes in areas where traffic is not friendly towards bicycles. I am thinking of some major arterial roads in my own city, but even more so in many parts of the USA. Safetly in numbers is definitely improved, and taking up a full lane, while it does slow down traffic to a degree, is something traffic other than bicycles should be getting more accustomed to, because research has proven [pdfs] that the more cyclists there are on the road, the less accidents happen.

I would love to see this idea grow. If you are in an area where you think you might want to start one, there’s some guidelines on how to over here. I’m lucky, I live along a rail line with an excellent bicycle path for 90% of my commute, but many people are not so fortunate, and this could be a great way for individual cyclists to ride more safely and also more socially. And with ebikes, the weaker riders can easily keep up with the stronger ones, keeping the overall speed higher and more competitive time wise for those who don’t want to ride at a slower “social” pace to get to work.

So rode down to Fremantle today to see my accountant. Had planned to ride back via a supplier on the south side of the river and visit a friend but the accountant took so long I ran out of time.

Nearing Fremantle I rode past not one, but two, petrol powered bikes, they had stickers on them and I got the impression they may have been hired, but I was in a hurry so didn’t stop to ask. I got to Fremantle in about 4.5 AH, and in about 40 minutes from the CBD [20km distance= average speed 30kph, which means I must have been cruising at around 35 to account for traffic lights & other stops/slowdowns]. Not bad eh!

On the way home I managed to run into a guy on the corner of Barrack St waiting for the lights to change who had an old currie chain drive [I think?] on his rear wheel. Hi random ebiker if you are reading! [I gave my blog details ;)]

Not only that, but who should ride into view just as we were chatting? Chris! He had a replacement charger for me too, so it was a most fortuitous and exciting meeting - there are so few ebikers in Perth still, and it’s truly exciting meeting any others randomly. I complained about the petrol powered bikes, and lamented the difficulty of getting friends to even borrow a bike to see what they’re like. But we are agreed that electric bikes are aaaaaalmost at that critical point of becoming adopted widely in western countries We just have to get people to try them!