ebikeblog.org

c/o the BBC: UK Supermarket chain Waitrose has begun a small pilot program with four stores for groceries purchased online to be delivered by electric-assist cargo bikes.  The bikes can carry up to 6 trays of groceries and keep food frozen for 2 hours. While the bikes will only be doing a small portion of deliveries the store makes, it’s a step in the right direction and the store will not need to purchase any new delivery vehicles for the time being – with any luck this will be the way they’ll continue to grow their delivery fleet!

Full story and video available here.

So, last week I had to do a bunch of ticket distribution as well as flyer and poster drops for an event we’re holding for NYE – Euchronia. Turns out the absolutely best possible vehicle for such a task [visiting half a dozen inner city suburbs within 3-4 hours, total distance around 25km, frequent stopping and traveling along busy commercial streets with many shops and much foot traffic] is my trusty eBike! Bit windy out [as my chapped lips attest] but the job was made easy with my eBike, and headwinds didn’t deter me in the slightest. There will be more poster runs in future, and I’m looking forward to them!

Saw this, and had to share:

Lady is the Boss – Bicycle fight!

Lately I’ve been using my eZtorq to head up to Fitzroy once every week or two. It’s a nice easy route, and faster than any other means at my disposal. Also cheaper, and just generally awesome. It’s almost a shame I don’t need to travel more often but I’m quite happy knowing my carbon footprint is as low as it possibly could be for my daily travel requirements!

We went a visiting to CERES today! It was the first outing for my eZee Torq having only just got heem back yesterday, and even with the long hiatus, battery charged fine and I didn’t even come close to running out, even going back via Merri creek and stopping in at FOE on the way home.

At Ceres, Chris had a bit of a look around the bike shed area, then we went and had a lovely lunch – there wasn’t a huge rmenu but the salad and the gluten free orange & poppy seed cake + bush chai were all great. My salad looking delicious:

But Chris looked a little alarmed by his muffin:

Got asked by one of the staff about my tshirt, and had to provide a business card, heh. Then we went wandering, and I took many photos:

I then went and bought a bunch of seedlings at the Nursery, we wandered back down past the hoardes of chilluns, and then all loaded up zee bike, we chuffed off back to the city, via the Merri trail, though the way was confusing at times and we ended up having to go up stairs at one point. Oops. Of course, we had to stop for photo ops along the way:

Here’s a pic of Chris’ Brompton Folder “at rest”:

and ready to roll [it’s really neat the way it just flips over!]

and finally here’s me and my eZee Torq [not the most flattering pic of me ever, but eh]:

And then, just when I thought we were almost in the city, we came upon the Collingwood Children’s Farm which I had no idea was there! It was delightfully green, and very traditional farm vibe, almost a little too tidy and pristine, like Switzerland (if you’ve ever been there, you’ll know what I mean). Must go back for one of the Farmer’s Markets there or the Convent next door, as well as a nice breakfast at the Cafe [nom]. I have to say, the food at Ceres will be hard to beat.

So there, that was our Adventure. It was neat. I am hoping to do more eBiking rides in future. If you can suggest any good rides in Melbourne, please do!

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.