New Snugg post

My latest post in the practical pedal electric commuter blog.


In the last 24 hours the Snugg has twice saved me from making a bad decision. The first time was last night. I had just gotten back from Bridger Bowl, Bozeman's local ski area. I was telemark skiing all day, and I was tired, and I mean the kind of tired that makes sitting on the couch kind of a chore. Whilst getting some much needed steak and potatoes prepared I get the text, there's a little get together, am I coming? Well of course not, I'm sitting on my butt in front of the T.V. I'm certainly not riding a bike across town. To top it off, there's a fifteen mile headwind the whole way. If I do go, I'm driving my car. Then, it occurs to me, there's an electric bike in my garage, it's not like I actually have to work really hard to get anywhere. So, after arriving at Molly's in fine style by passing a couple Suby's on my 28 mph sprint down Main Street, I promptly had a few beers and feel asleep on her couch instead of my own.

The second time the Snugg kept me from behind the wheel of my car was this morning. I woke up, showered, dressed, went downstairs, and opened the garage door to this.



Hmmm...that doesn't look like a lot of fun, maybe I'd better put on another layer.



Now I consider myself a fairly dedicated cycling commuter, but that much fresh snow is a lot of work to ride through, just laying down enough power to keep the front wheel tracking straight is quite the effort. And remember I've got to do it with the sore quads and hangover that are my reward from the previous days activities. Nonetheless owing nothing to my strength of will, I swung a leg over the Snugg custom Surly Cross Check and headed off through a veritable blizzard. The bike performed flawlessly on my trip to work, the steering was a little squirrely in the packed snow ruts, but the power of the electric assist kept my momentum more or less forward. On a normal bike, I would have simply spun out as I lost forward momentum and the front wheel tracked off to the side. With the Snugg I could simply maintain upright balance and let the motor power through. It required some agile steering, but it was doable. Tragically, my judgment was not so well dialed and I headed out without my usual facemask...cold.

The Lectric Bike

This is a copy of the post that I wrote today for the Practical Pedal Electric Commuter Blog

Now that I’ve had the Snugg prototype for a few days, and put thirty or so miles on it, I have some thoughts. These thoughts, fortunately, are quite contrary to some preconceptions I carried into this experiment. One of those preconceptions, given the weather of late, was that I would not be working much on the bike, and would therefore feel cold. Another was that riding something with a motor would be the equivalent to riding a scooter or a small motorcycle, which while not completely antithetical to my philosophy about transportation, still not my first choice. I am after all a cyclist, not a motorcyclist.

Fortunately neither of those concerns turned out to have any merit, essentially for the same reason. This bike feels like exactly that, a bike. When I take off in the morning I have the exact same feeling as if I were riding my xtracycle, I’m riding a bicycle to work. The only change is that it is much much faster than a conventional bicycle. Now granted, I could if I chose, put it in a low gear and pedal the modicum rate that would engage the motor, and therefore let the motor basically push me down the road at around 20 miles an hour. But the emotion evoked while riding the Snugg commuter is the same as while riding a good downhill section, or home from the bar with a brisk tailwind. That extra sensation of speed is so exhilarating that I find myself pedaling much harder than I normally would unassisted. Now, instead of increasing my cadence to catch and pass another cyclist that has turned onto the road a block ahead, I am trying to chase down that Escalade, and more often than not, I catch it. Because now I can maintain a speed for several blocks that is greater than the speedlimit in most instances. I therefore arrive at my lab every morning, slightly out of breath, sweating just a bit (even this last week with temps in the single digits, that’s well below zero for the Canadians and Europeans out there), and with a small smile on my face that I lack on the few and regrettable days that I drive my car. Cuz I just rode a bike to work, I just did it in about half the time it would normally take.

Riding in January?

Being winter and all, most residents of the Gallatin valley are focusing more on the fresh snow at Bridger Bowl than the possibility of getting in some epic trail rides. However a small group of Bozeman cyclists have been doing just that. By 'small group' I basically mean John and I.

John has set up a blog strictly dedicated to trail conditions around Bozeman. In the months ahead you can expect that more and more posts will pop up there detailing what is open.

For now, Pipestone is 100% ridable, and Sourdough and Southcotton wood have that well bootpacked snow that is a blast to ride...even if the skate skiers prolly want to kill us.

There's also always the daily commute, which at times is some of the best riding one can do. For the next week or two I've taken over the Snugg electric bike prototype and will be blogging about my daily rides on their blog electric commuter.

So, while it's still cold out there, just keep pedaling. As I found out on Sunday, even mountain biking in temps as low as eight below is warm if you hammer. Enjoy the short time that you can ride and not sweat like a pig :)

Bozeman Alleycat

It's rediculous. I never thought that I would have more fun on a roadbike than on a mountain bike...BUUUTTT...on Sunday April 29th it happened in the form of an Alleycat race put on by a buddy of mine here in Bozeman. For those like me who don't really know what an alleycat is, I suggest you check out this website.

http://www.digave.com/

Our race had an open manifest, which basically means that we were given a list of places around town that we had to get to in any order we decided. It was fantastic, there were about twenty riders and the whole time everyone was riding as hard as they could, but still trying to help out all the other riders in finding checkpoints that were particularly elusive.

The race began with a foot race to the bikes about a hundred yards away. During the mayhem of the start, my chain got knocked off, unbeknownst to me. As I tried to lift the bike, clip in, and get on the pedals all in one motion, the expected resistance wasn't there and I found myself going over the handlebars before making even one full pedal rotation at the start of the race. The best part was that I dislocated my left shoulder in the process and had to do the first mile or so with one hand...awsome. I did, however win an award for my little bought of gracelessness

http://thebozemanfix.blogspot.com/2007/04/alleycat-results.html

Anyway, one of these days I'll do some mountain bike riding, but for some reason I'm really having some fun on the asphalt quad track for the time being...

Traffic

Today I planned a road ride with a couple of friends. While the ride itself was goooood, it was the ride to meet the people I was doing the ride with that was fully sweet. I road about a mile down Maine Street to pick up Jacque first, the whole time blitzing past traffic...23 miles per hour passing cars on both sides of the road. It makes you understand why these guys do what they do http://www.digave.com/videos/

Once I had my team together we set out of town to Nash road eventually hooking up with 19th. It was about 40 miles round trip, a decent ride. But the highlight of the day was blazing cars stuck in lines at traffic lights...I may never drive again.

Singlespeed Urban Assult

There's just something about riding a singlespeed...simple, light, effective. After an extremely brief bought of inexplicable mechanical failures, E-rock, Klaus, and I headed east on Durston tonight with the intention of first shredding some sick road construction gnar. The ultimate destination was Story Hill, which basically consists of a roughly one mile climb up a gravel road followed by what could be an incredibly tasty ribbon of singletrack downhill. Unfortunately it had been denuded by equine traffic while it was still soft from the spring snow melt, I can't imagine anything that can destroy a trail faster than horses.

Regardless...

Bozeman has a pretty great system of trail twisting through the east half of town. Unfortunately, I'm not extremely well versed in navigating these trails, but fortunately E-rock's got everything dialed in the routefinding department, so after navigating construction debris for a bit we were able to latch on to some relatively decent urban dirt track northeast to the Story Hill road. There is really an amazing rhythm to riding off road, even while riding through town, having smooth dirt under your tires is frankly blissful.

But the real point is how incredible it is to ride a singlespeed. DNA and I had a talk at some point about how quiet one's mind is while on a bike. To some degree I think that's why I love riding bikes in general and singlespeed's in particular. One certainly works "harder" on a singlespeed, but at the same time, one's mind is completely silent because shifting doesn't even occur to you. All you have to do is pedal, really hard...and fast.

It's basically everything that made you love to ride a bicycle as a child...