How I got into E-Bikes

I was never really into bicycles as an adult, although have memories of riding all over hte place, and some trails we’d rip through on single-speeds, and later stripped and rebuilt my 18-speed as a teen.  

After that, I really got into riding dirt bikes, some much bigger than me; first minibikes, then an RM-125 set up for racing I about needed a ladder to get onto (I was 13 or so..).  I ran through a series of bikes between myself as well as some friends swapping off-road toys - a small but awesome DR100 (so throwable), older Yamaha XTs, IT and DTs in the 175-350cc range, a CB800 street bike for a while, Suzuki Savage for something ‘entirely different,’ and then was ‘on pause’ for a little while after leaving WA state and an old-but-kicking-butt TT175 I’d throw in a truck and go scout out property I could ride on using an ORV(Off-Road-Vehicle) sticker.  (Mine was newer than the pic to the right.. ;)  

I went through a series of motorcycles over time and still have a DRZ and SV650 today - more on these in my Motorcycles section of the site, including riding a few foreign countries...

My wife and I have family on her side overseas, and occasionally visit, usually trying to do at least 2 weeks when possibly, lining up with her breaks at work and me usually working remotely for part of the trip.  

So - off we went for a few weeks to the Czech Republic.  I grew up going on two vacationsa year with my parents - one of which was usually driving to Florida, then the ‘real one’ as I called it - we’d go and fly <somewhere>.  Usually it was somewhere reasonably close to the US - Bahamas, Virgin Islands, Dominican Republic, but also had been to Aruba and Puerto Rico, and I just kind of kept on traveling both inside and outside the US.  I highly recommend it, especially if able to see and appreciate the viewpoints or reality of others - I’m still amazed at just how many tiny motorcycles (~100-150cc) are all over the Dominican Republic, sometimes carrying 3 people along with propane tanks, but also the sheer poverty the closer you get to the border with Haiti… most of Europe of course, is first world, with some things similar to the US, some pretty different, regardless of the languages spoken, and of course, being thousands of years older than the US, tend to have some pretty interesting old castles and such (at least those surviving or being rebuilt after WWII).

With the time difference, I will say that it was incredibly nice to not be jumping into the usual set of work meetings nearly as soon as I woke up.. ;)  

We got in in the afternoon, eventually making our way to the hotel successfully.  There are buses and trams, but we hadn’t quite figured those out yet.  I did some scanning for where we’d wind up eating, and also figuring - 'ok, we’ve got most of a full day tomorrow to play super-tourist and see what we could - now what?’

This wasn’t our collective first time in Germany - my wife had been previously for a few days, and I’d been stranded overnight in the middle of a major storm due to missing a connecting flight, but it was the first time for me with any amount of time, so wanted to make the best of it.  

Power-scanning through Google, Yelp, Travelocity and others, as well as seeing apparently Dresden was quite busy at the moment, what had started as maybe some kind of river/walk or open-top bus hop on/off kind of thing had me coming back to one thing - 

There was some confusion when we made it to the rental place, as apparently they thought we’d rented normal bikes.  Yeah, we probably could have ridden them, but hey, we were already in the middle of an unknown-to-us city in a not-really-known-to-us country, with traffic laws also not known to us, let alone - hills.  

We sorted things out and we had two Bosch-powered ebikes brought out.  In hindsight, the bikes are pretty typical EU style bikes - 250W Bosch motors, with Eco, Tour, Sport and Turbo modes available for progressively more assistance or help from the motor.

I think my wife was nervous, but after taking a quick ride on the sidewalk, she settled into it.  The tour itself was great - almost 3 hours with stops and breaks for pictures, the the tour guide was awesome.  The rest of the group had normal bikes, and the group was reasonalbe sized - a family of 4, and I think 2 other couples besides us.  

I had fun playing around with the different power modes, while I think my wife mostly kept hers in ECO mode, although on a stop or two I’d put hers into Sport mode and wondered if she’d notice… 

The bike’s power did stop around 20mph or lower(the bike’s speedo was in kM/hour of course..), but considering the density of traffic and the purpose of sight-seeing, it wasn’t an issue.  Changing assistance modes was easy via a single control on the left-hand bars, and the display was reasonable enough in black and white - battery remaining percentage in bars, current speed, tripmeter/odometer and ‘power mode.’  You could also turn off assistance altogether, and the bike is ride-able although heavier than a normal bike.

The bikes in general really felt ‘like you, but more’ meaning you could feel yourself moving the bike, but easier than normally, and according to the power level selected.  I later found out my wife really wasn’t changing gears very often but seemed to do fine.. the motor’s assistance would allow for less than ideal gear selection and it wasn’t a real issue, although things are smoother overall when geared appropriately. 

Overall, we had a great time - a combination of just being outside, doing something ‘a bit different,’ seeing as many places as we could in a short time, and the tour guide’s narratives - a really good time was had.