Mistakes were made! 100 miles of ebiking
Last year for our Summer to Remember list, we challenged ourselves to hike 100 miles between Memorial Day and Labor Day Weekends. Some of it was enjoyable, but we noticed that when we had opportunities to recreate in other ways, we often felt pressured to choose hiking anyway because of our goal. Specifically, we found that ebiking really fell by the wayside. So this year, we fixed things. We could have made a generic "miles biking/running/walking/hiking/rowing/paragliding etc." challenge, or we could have eliminated the hiking challenge altogether. But we're not that smart. Instead, we tacked on a 100 miles of ebiking goal in addition to a 100 miles of hiking goal. We thought, "How hard can it be? We can ebike way more miles in way less time than hiking!" While a factually accurate statement, we soon realized that a lot more goes into ebiking than just completing miles.
Harsh realities of ebiking
When we first bought our ebikes, we had many conversations explaining to people the advantages and disadvantages of them. The advantage that served as our decision-maker to buy the ebikes in the first place was their ability to be stored in smaller spaces. Our ebikes fold up, so we can take them on our travels. We never had room for our regular bikes. Beyond storage, though, is the fact that we can ride more easily, and therefore longer distances, on our ebikes. We are not endurance athletes, so a little assistance now and again helps us maintain our stamina for covering more miles. A common misconception is that ebikes do all the work for you and you don't even need to pedal. Au contraire! We pedal just like on a regular bike, except we can set a pedal assist which gives us a little battery-operated boost, say, when we're going uphill or when we want to go faster than our legs alone allow.
What we've noticed over time is that ebiking is not much less taxing than normal biking. The bikes weigh about 65lb, so even getting a little pedal assist really just makes up for the extra weight we're lugging. The exception is when we ride uphill. The assist really does save us from some serious leg cramps, although on our normal rides we would often walk up the hills. So which is better, walking the bike or continuing to pedal, albeit with a little lithium support? The way we see it, we're being active either way, and that's the goal.
Our ebikes also have throttles, so technically, we could run entirely on the motor and fly like the wind. Except for the occasion that I do this for fun on a straightaway, we mostly leave the throttle alone. Otherwise our batteries get depleted really quickly. Plus, we do actually want to get the exercise!
Case in point, yes our legs hurt after our ebike rides. We knew this coming into our challenge, but being in the saddle so often through the summer, new harsh realities came to light.
Something that Anthony read about ebikes is that they have worse suspension than regular bikes. The suspension's "travel," or amount of bounce the wheel can get, is low, so the wheels don't absorb bumps as well. You can see even in the above video that a little bump was enough to rattle the bike pretty hard. I didn't know this suspension detail, so I thought maybe I was just being wimpy or misremembering my non-electric bike rides, but when I told Anthony I was feeling the bumps more, he let me know I wasn't just imagining things. While this information was validating, it didn't change the fact that bumps hurt. Toward the final weeks of our challenge, we were ebiking in 14-15 mile stints, sometimes multiple days in a row. A bike seat is uncomfortable no matter if it's on a regular bike or an ebike. The chafing was real.
But amidst the pain were the stories that inevitably come from embarking on such a challenge. Time for a little bike ride down Memory Lane!
Will bike for ice cream
We started the challenge in high spirits and in a perfect place: Door County, Wisconsin. If every ride had water views, aromatic flowers, and ice cream, then we probably would have had a very pleasant 100 miles! But alas, this experience was only 9.6 miles of our total. We left right from our campsite at Hy-Land Court RV Park and took back roads down to Door County Creamery. After partaking in a delicious ice cream picnic, we felt motivated to continue our ride, and so we went over to Ellison Bluff State Natural Area, where we combined our ride with a 1-mile hike and enjoyed a gorgeous view of Green Bay.
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Nicole Anderson
The one where we didn't use pedal assist
Several weeks went by before we took our ebikes out again. Blame the rain, heat, humidity, bugs, and busyness for that one. But we had a ride on the schedule, one that we registered for in advance: The group ride at the Cherry Festival in Traverse City, MI. Will bike for ice cream and will also bike for pie! We joined over 100 fellow cyclists for a 2-mile voyage through Traverse City. We got to travel through the residential neighborhoods, the festival grounds, and along the shore of Lake Michigan. At the end, we were each awarded a coupon for a free slice of pie from the Grand Traverse Pie Co. The ride was leisurely and mostly flat, and because we were keeping a slow pace along with the other riders, we ended up not using our pedal assist. Instead, we treated our ebikes like regular bikes...very heavy, oddly shaped regular bikes with fat tires. Pedal assist can sometimes be dangerous in crowded places because when we start pedaling, suddenly the assist will kick in and we'll jolt forward. We did not want to risk this happening and accidentally run into someone!
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Nicole Anderson
The bike trail that leads to the bridge to nowhere
We completed one more ride before leaving Michigan, after finding tips on good bike trails around Harrisville State Park on the east side of the Lower Peninsula. Unfortunately, the tips were not for actual trails but rather highly trafficked roads. We did the best we could in and around the state park and saw some lake views, but we didn't take any pictures. After that, we didn't ebike again until Pennsylvania, when we finally set our wheels on the Knox and Kane Rail Trail in Allegheny National Forest. This was our first big dent in our challenge; we clocked 16 miles riding from our campsite to Kinzua Bridge State Park and back. This was extra fun because the rail trail led straight to the defunct viaduct that is now the Kinzua Skywalk. Basically, the bike path turns back into the railway and then leads to nothing but a crazy view of viaduct rubble.
Will try and fail to bike for ice cream
We left Pennsylvania, hit up New York and Vermont, and then landed in Massachusetts. Nearly a month went by before we took the ebikes back out. For shame! Alright, not actually, because we spent that time devoting ourselves to the hiking challenge. We knew that if we fell too far behind hiking, it would be very difficult to catch up, but ebiking could be done. And so, the bikes took one for the team.
Wompatuck State Park was our glimmer of hope because we knew that the park is perfect for covering the big miles. It's the best place to ride bikes near our old home. We booked 2 weeks at the park and had big plans to ebike as many days as possible, but on theme for our summer, we contended with some unruly weather. We didn't want it to stop us. We had the idea to bike through the state park and over to our favorite ice cream place, Hornstra Farms, which you may recognize as gracing our Summer to Remember lists for both 2022 and 2024. The back side of the farm is across the street from one of the Wompatuck entrances and we were dead set on trying to find our way over there. We checked the map to find a route through the park and then out to the residential streets of Norwell, MA. Only problem was, our weather apps kept telling us that thunderstorms were in the forecast. Well, one app was telling us this, and it didn't even seem that confident. It kept changing the start time, skipping around anywhere between 2 and 5PM. Our other apps weren't saying anything. We looked at the sky and saw nothing but a few clouds, and so we decided to head out, knowing that we could always turn around if we heard thunder. No matter what, at least we'd get some miles. So off we went.
Things started off smoothly, but we quickly realized that our route through the park wasn't actually taking us to the entrance closest to Hornstra. You can see in the above picture that the Grove Street Access, where we hoped to come out, was quite a bit further west of where we actually came out. This meant we had a much longer stint on the roads, and while they are manageable, they're fairly stressful. We had to be very careful to keep out of the way of cars.
When we got to the Grove Street Access entrance, we pulled over. We looked across to the back entrance of Hornstra, but it was blocked off. In order to get there, we'd need to go around the corner to the main entrance. The final intersection is not an easy one to navigate in a car, let alone on a bike – and we'd be taking a left, aka the deadliest turn. As soon as we started debating whether or not to actually ride through this intersection, the weather gods made the decision for us. We heard a huge rumble of thunder. We called it then and there, but we were still miles from our campsite. Instead of turning around and going all the way back on the roads, we decided to use the Grove Street entrance and take a shortcut.
We should have known better. There was obviously a reason Google Maps didn't take us that way in the first place when we plugged in biking directions, but we got all confused when we entered the Grove St parking lot and saw a woman with bikes on the back of her vehicle. Granted, she wasn't using the bikes...ugh. We proceeded into the park and immediately hit a narrow trail surrounded by pine trees. Dodging the tree trunks was almost fun until we realized that the trail only got worse. The trail map shows a little bicycle icon on it, but in case you didn't know, an ebike is not a mountain bike. We were in for a rough road. Literally.
The biggest threats were the exposed roots and rocks. Even small rocks were barely traversable because the tires slip right off them. Most of the time, we tried to go slow to dodge all the obstacles, but we couldn't balance if we went too slow. It was a catch-22. Add in our very non-mountain-bike-level suspension, and it was a recipe for disaster.
Eventually, we got off the bikes and walked them, but this was no normal walk. This was walking up and down rolling hills, climbing over rocks and roots, lugging 65lb bikes. To make matters worse, the thunder booms were getting closer and more frequent, and we had no idea how to get out of the woods and onto a cleaner path.
I kept checking the map, looking for the shortest route back to the main park road, but we were on the opposite side of the park. At each junction, we tried to take whatever path seemed to lead west or north, hoping that eventually we would get somewhere familiar. Up until this point, we had somehow escaped the rain, but we began feeling a couple of drops. The thunder continued overhead.
After what seemed like forever, we found a trail that would lead us to Boundary Pond, which we knew was near the main road. We still needed to get there and then go around the pond, but if the trail remained clear, we should be able to reach the road on the other side. We decided that, precarious as it was, we would make better time using our wheels. Instead of pedaling, I kept my feet dangling on either side of the bike and used the throttle to push myself forward. This way, if I lost balance, I could catch myself with my foot.
Finally, we found Boundary Pond, and soon after, the road. We took a second to catch our breath, and I snapped a picture of my hand. It was so swollen from gripping the handlebars so tightly, and I had imprints of the handlebar print in my palm!
We may have been out of the woods, but we weren't out of the woods yet. We still needed to take the road back to the campground before the storm fully hit. We almost made it too; the rain began pouring as we entered our campground loop.
Our trek through the woods only ended up being about a mile, but boy was it gnarly! Too bad we hadn't checked satellite view, because that would have given us an indication of just how dicey that woods would be. We joked about counting that mile as a hiking mile, but we didn't. Hauling those bikes through the forest was definitely some form of ebiking. The crazy voyage totaled 6.8 miles, and after that we needed a break for a while. We waited 5 days before getting back in the saddle. Don't worry, though; we got our Hornstra ice cream the very next day.
With our first Wompatuck bike ride cut short, we hadn't hit our halfway mark yet. We were only 42 miles in and had only 2.5 weeks to saddle up and get the job done. We started regretting our procrastination at the beginning of the summer and thought about admitting defeat, but the weather was about to take a turn for the better and give us one last ray of hope.
To be continued.