And now for something completely different.
I have always been a bicyclist. Not a competitor who trains for races, not a hobbyist who wears the right shirts, not a fan who knows when the Tour de France is happening. I have never owned or used cleats or pegs or a cage or any of that other stuff that makes you fall over sideways when you stop. Nothing wrong with any of that. It’s just not me.
I am committed to the bicycle as an ordinary extension of the human body, as the default way of getting from one place to another for distances of between a half mile and ten miles, and as a restorative way of transporting the body, with its eyes and ears open, across twenty or thirty miles of rural terrain for the purpose of clearing the mind and lightening the heart. This is about transportation not merely in the banal sense of locomoting the flesh but also in the lyrical sense of elevating the spirit. And sometimes driving out the demons. Sometimes clarifying the thoughts. But it is not all nirvana. Sometimes I listen to books, music, news programs, or podcasts.
Down memory lane
I started out with three wheels. I think I had a tricycle. But what I really remember was my tractor. All metal. It had a steering wheel and pedals. The chain was enclosed. I wonder how many miles I rode up and down the driveway at the Norfolk Street house. And I think maybe a bit of street mileage, when a parent went for a walk? But mostly up and down the driveway.
My first two-wheeler was a fixie. My grandfather (Poppa) but it together from scraps he found here and there. He painted it white. It was small. Just right for whatever age I was. Four? Five? Then when I outgrew it I think he gave me a slightly larger bicycle, this one with coaster brakes. Or maybe I inherited it from my sister. I must ask her. She remembers these things better than I.
But then when I was bigger I had a Huffy. Ordinary boys’ bicycle with 26-inch wheels, coaster brakes, ordinary bicycle handlebars, fenders, kickstand. It was red. Many miles around the neighborhood. And then when I was in junior high school, maybe around seventh grade, I started delivering newspapers. I took over one Richmond Times-Dispatch route from a cousin, then another, and bought his baskets too: a large basket for the front that could hold a talk stack of newspapers laid flat, and two large baskets for the back that could between them hold the same number again. On a weekday, I could get all the papers for each route in one trip. On Sundays, it took more than one trip. I could go off on newpapers-route stories, but this post is just about my bicycles.
So I will get to the next bicycle. With money saved from my paper routes, after a few years, so I guess when I was in high school, I bought a Gitane ten-speed from a bicycle shop over in Richmond. I learned to work on it myself, mostly by reading and re-reading a paperback called Richard’s Bicycle Book. I got special tools like a chain tool and a tool for removing the rear gear sproket. Truing my own wheels drove me crazy, but I did it. I did whatever needed doing.
Richard’s bicycle book was full of all kinds of advice. He talked about riding in traffic. To survive, you sometimes have to claim the road, take a whole lane. “If they give you the horn, give them the finger.” Yes, I did that a few times. I only have one story about that, but I’ll save it for another time, in case I ever decide to write a post on anger management, or more specifically on deciding whether and when to fly the bird.
Surviving on a bicycle also meant dealing with dogs. Richard had advice about that too. If attacked by a large dog, he said, you pull the little bike pump from its bracket on the down tube and shove it down their throat. I never had one of those bike-mountable pumps. Richard’s advice in that case was to make a fist and shove your whole arm down their throat. Sure, you’d get their teeth in your arm, but you’d kill the dog rather than vice versa. For little dogs, his advice was to grab them by the hind legs and smack their skull against a tree.
I wondered whether Richard ever tried any of this himself or just threw it in for entertainment. But all the mechanical stuff I took seriously. It kept me going. Riding all around my hometown. Did I ever have the bicycle with me at Wheaton College? I believe I did. I certainly had it at Gordon-Conwell Seminary: I rode from where I lived in Beverly up to the South Hamilton campus, over to the Congregational church on 1A where I was organist, everywhere. I remember one night riding home from choir rehearsal in darkness so black—well, the usual expression is, so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, and that was about right. I didn’t have a light, or the battery was dead.
When I was a graduate student at Boston University I rode the Gitane all over Boston. For a while, I substitute-taught in public high schools. Boston Latin, Boston English, South Boston, others in Roxbury or Dorchester and I don’t know where else. I rode my bicycle from my Alston apartment to all these places. Over to Harvard Square. I didn’t have a car! Had got rid of that when I was done with seminary and moved into the city for grad school. I learned the hard way that streetcar tracks could do you in. Out in Brighton, by St. Elizabeth’s hospital, when a taxi stopped, double-parking, and the driver threw his door open right in front of me, I veered left, the front wheel of the Gitane fell into the tracks and locked, and I became airborne. Briefly.
I kept that Gitane for many years. I’m going to look for the photos I took when I finally gave it away here in Michigan after buying my Trek.
I was going to tell you about my current bicycles, but it seems I took off down memory lane instead.
My current bicycles
To the point, then. I now have two bicycles. I’m just going to tell you about them concisely.
Several years ago I bought a Trek FX 7.4. Since I wanted to use it both for commuting and for riding around for fun, I got a bunch of add-ons: fenders, a kickstand, a rack, a bracket for a water bottle, and lights. With all that stuff on board, it weighs 28.8 pounds. I love it. I have ridden many miles around the paved trails and the backroads south of Grand Rapids.
But then more recently, wanting to cut some time and effort off my 24-mile roundtrip commute to the office, and having a bit of extra cash dropped upon me, I bought a Specialized Turbo Vado e-bike. Again, I got fenders, kickstand, and rack. It weighs 38.0 pounds. I am very happy with it.
In case you know as little about e-bikes as I did before I bought the Turbo Vado: I think some e-bikes will go by themselves if you don’t pedal. This one does not. You can select from three levels of assist, but it’s your helper, not your substitute. You can change the assist levels, but I have stayed with the factory settings: level 1 adds 30 percent to your own pedaling effort; level 2 adds 60 percent; and level 3 adds 100 percent.
With the Trek, my commuting time, one-way, was around 50 minutes if I was really cranking, longer if I relaxed. I was hoping I might cut that to 30 minutes with an e-bike. I have not achieved that. Looking back over my records on Strava, I see I did the return ride once in 36 minutes. My usual times are between 41 and 46 minutes. So I would say the advantage of the Vado over the Trek is: save a little time, save a lot of sweat. I’ve had a replacement chainring on backorder for months now. If I get get a few more teeth going up front, I’m hoping to boost routine downhill speeds from around 24 mph to around 30 mph and cut my overall time.
But other advanges to the Turbo Vado—apart from arriving sooner and not as sweaty, or now that temps are low, not sweaty at all—have to do with stability and safety. The tires are are wider than the Trek’s, so I worry less about sliding out. The disc brakes inspire a lot more confidence. The lights don’t have to be taken off and carried in the house for charging.
The 12-mile one-way trip uses less or more of the Vado’s battery life depending on the level of assist. What I have been doing lately is use level 3 assist the whole way, but that takes the battery down from 100 percent to 40 percent, which would make doing the same on the way home impossible. So I have been taking the charger to work with me to boost the battery back up for the return. Not sure it’s worth it. If I cut back to level 2, just bumping up to level 3 for the steepest uphills, I can do the round trip on one charge. Specialized is willing to sell me an extra battery that would fasten to one of the places where a water-bottle bracket can be attached—but it costs $450. Yikes! For a battery.
It’s more the riding experience than the statistics that I like about the Vado. If I’m trying to get somewhere, the speeds I manage on the Trek often just feel too slow to me, without reference to departure and arrival times. If I’m out for exercise, slogging up a hill at 4 or 5 mph on the Trek, and getting sweaty and winded in the process, is great. But if I’m trying to get to work, I’d rather be going 8 or 10 mph up the hill and not having to try quite so hard to do it; or I might want to pedal harder and go 12 or 14 mph up the hill. On flat-ground straightaways on stretches of road or trail where no cross-streets or driveways force caution, and assuming I don’t want to be putting in maximum effort and getting maximum sweaty, I’d rather be cruising at 21 mph on the Vado than at 14 on the Trek.
The last thing I want to say about the Vado is that it’s perfectly possible to ride it without even powering up the electric motor. The range of gearing, with just the single chainring up front and the 11-level cassette in the back, is perfectly adequate and roughly comparable to what’s available on the Trek with 3 options on the front derailleur and 9 on the back. If you don’t need the lights, you don’t have to press the power button to ride. And if you do power it up, you can still go with zero assist. It’s a real bicycle. But I nearly always end up clicking on at least the first level of assist, to make it feel like I’m riding an inexplicably sturdy 20-pound bicycle not a 38-pounder.
That’s all I can think of for now. I’ll check later to see if anyone has questions.
Verba Sparsa 