Fresh Air Experience

Our Staff member Patrick rented an E-bike while on Vacation in British Columbia these are his thoughts on the experience.

For the Ottawa area, this season seems to have been a watershed moment for e-bikes. In our shop we have people coming in to ask about them on a daily basis. Those of us who cycle in the are have certainly seen e-bikes on the Ottawa bike path network. I know I’ve been passed by people with massive smiles as they pedal past. Though they are occasionally controversial (usually with people who haven’t tried one), it is clear that for Ottawa, e-bikes are here to stay.

When you’re selling a bike, if a customer comes back from a test ride smiling from ear to ear, you know the bike is sold. It’s one of my favourite moments in my job – seeing the pure joy inspired by bicycles, and one of the things I’ve learned this year is that e-bikes do that for a lot of people, often times people we don’t normally see in a sports shop.

Who buys e-bikes?

What could be wrong about a product that makes people so happy? My assumption has been that the role of e-bikes is that they bring happiness to people who, to put it bluntly, aren’t real cyclists. They’re for people who can’t do the work to enjoy the thrill of cycling. So a couple of the e-bike sales we made this year were a little surprising to me – we sold them to people who are real cyclists. A sale I worked on personally was a Specialized Turbo Levo Expert. My customer, Alan, has been riding Mountain Bikes in Ottawa for years. He bought the bike to ride alongside his other really fancy mountain bikes. This was not a replacement for effort, or skill, but a complementary part of a quiver of different bikes for different days.

Recently I was on vacation in British Columbia. For a variety of logistical reasons, I was unable to bring my beloved Specialized Bicycles Stumpjumper 29er, and instead planned renting bikes. My two big rides were the Seven Summits trail in Rossland and the Frisby Ridge Trail in Revelstoke. For these trips I organized bike rentals in those towns. Seven Summits required climbing seven mountains on one epic ride. That’s seven mountains more than we have in the Ottawa area, so the day left me pretty gassed. I had the Revelstoke ride a few days out but wanted to get a ride in without leaving myself destroyed. So I called up Black Dog Cycle & Ski in Kimberley and asked if they would rent me an e-bike.

I had tried both the Specialized Turbo Levo and the Giant Trance-E in Ottawa as part of different dealer and Ottawa Mountain Bike Association events. The Trek that I rented was more akin to the Giant Trance-E; powerful, stable, and planted. The Specialized Turbo Levo also feels a bit more playful than the Trek or the Giant Trance-E. These things are always trade-offs, as the extra speed you can generate with the motor at times better complements a sturdy feel.

My first serious e-bike ride

Though not my first time on an E-Bike, it was the first time I got to go for a serious ride on one. Though the time and distance were not too different from what I might do on a normal ride at home, I climbed more than double what I would over a similar distance when mountain biking in Gatineau Park, and maybe 10 times more than I would mountain biking at Larose Forest or South March Highlands. Obviously, this is where the motor helped. But it did not help as much as I expected – it certainly wasn’t easy! The Trek had four power assist settings. On open gravel double track and logging roads, the highest setting was a lot of fun. But on tighter singletrack, I found anything other than the second setting to be too much. Climbing tight switchbacks, where measuring timing and effort of a pedal stroke is key, I found that the higher settings caused the bike to accelerate uncomfortably. The lower setting took the edge off the steepest climbs but still left me in full control.

Another interesting thing was happening with my heart rate. Only once or twice on the entire ride did get into the 90% range. Equally important, it never dropped too low either. According to my sports watch, I burned a couple thousand calories. So while I never worked to the point of exhaustion, I got a real workout on the e-bike.

What this meant in the real world was that although I only had one afternoon to get a ride in, I got to see some of the best that the Kimberley Nature Park (kudos to Kimberley Trails Society!!) has to offer. The two standout trails for me were Magic Line and Thunder Turkey which are at opposite ends of the trail system. Certainly I could ride them both in the same day on a traditional mountain bike, but as I said I was looking to make sure I didn’t overdo it with another really big day on my horizon. The e-mtb allowed me to fully enjoy an otherwise taxing ride.

Final thoughts on e-bikes

My take-away is that what e-bikes are best for is helping to measure effort. That’s it. They are real work, and at times real hard work to ride. Need to get to work without sweating profusely, but you want to go hard on the way home? Full power on the way there, power off on the way back. Want to get in some extra laps mountain biking at Camp Fortune? An e-mountain bike has a place in Ottawa. Got a destination in mind and you’re worried about running into a headwind on the ride back? Why not a Specialized Turbo Creo? Do you have one day in a week to bike and you don’t want to end up sore and exhausted the day after? Perfect. Where I could see an e-bike in my garage is for situations where I know I’ll end up riding too hard if I get out for a ride, but I want to get out for a ride. Sometimes I want to be exhausted, and sometimes I don’t. An e-bike offers versatility, not ease. As Ottawa becomes a community that adopts e-bikes it is worth remembering that a motor is not a replacement for skill or effort, but it does help people reach that goal of smiling because they are on a bicycle.

Have you tried an e-bike? We’d love to hear about your experience.