Another week gone by without a post? Another week gone by and we STILL don’t have a permit to resume work at our new location down the street. This is getting a bit tiresome. Hopefully tomorrow morning we’ll hear from the city that we’re good to go. It’s time to get things ready to move! It’s time to stop paying rent on two different places. It’s time to stop feeling like the world’s just gone kind of mad and I’m spinning my wheels.

Speaking of spinning wheels. Both Tuesday and Thursday’s rides were shortened versions, lopping off West Old LaHonda because Kevin’s knees were in a bad place. So today, like last Sunday, we planned another ride with me on my regular 100% human-powered bike and Kevin on his e-bike. A bit more challenging route; up Old LaHonda, out 84 all the way to the coast, and back Tunitas. Could his bike do it?

I think it could have, if he hadn’t wanted to push the bike harder into the headwind on the way out to the coast. His bike has a high-quality 350 watt Bosch motor with 500 watt/hour battery. 4 power modes. Eco, Tour, Sport & Turbo. As you head up the power levels, you get… more power. Duh. But you also deplete the battery more quickly. Normally Kevin keeps it in “Tour” mode but heading out to the coast, he was using “Sport” to try and keep the speed up and get out of the wind. I didn’t know that at the time. He probably wouldn’t have been tempted to do that if we hadn’t come across another cyclist that he felt like he had to catch up to and pass.

So we’re at the bottom of Tunitas, before the real climb begins, and it says it’s got a range of 8 miles left. Well, that’s fine, the climb from there is only 7! Except that’s 8 miles of riding on kinda-rolling terrain. As we rode up the hill, he’d call out the reduction in miles, and we’re thinking, wishfully thinking, maybe it’s ultra-conservative and has more left in the battery than it shows. 1 mile of battery power left it says. About half a mile later, it says 0. Oh. That’s not a good sign. And a minute or two after that… she’s gone.

Thankfully this happened within visual range of the “grassy knoll” where the grade slackens greatly. Kevin was able to pedal on his own, with some assist from me, and we made our way to the top. On the way we tried to leave messages for my wife to see if she could meet us at the bottom of Kings with the battery from her own e-bike. It’s only 5 miles home from there, but with some climbing, and Kevin’s gimpy knee, riding a 55 pound e-bike without power wasn’t in the cards.

I’m pretty sure that, if Kevin’s knee wasn’t so bad, the bike would have made it just fine. And might have made it if he wasn’t pushing it pretty hard for 7 miles into the wind.

Kevin’s had an e-bike for commuting, a Trek Crossrip+, for a couple years. Great bike; fairly long range, but he’s never used it for a “real” ride. That pride thing, and no good reason to if the idea of riding is to get into shape and/or brag about dropping dad.

Today it wasn’t a choice. His knee is still causing him lots of trouble, and the options were either to not ride at all, see if he could get over Jefferson before feeling too much pain (and then have to return home), or ride his e-bike and see if the lighter load would save the knee.

It wasn’t the ride I expected; it was still pretty slow up Old LaHonda, as he tried to figure out the right combination of gear, speed and power level that would keep his knee from being too unhappy. But he made it, and we made it over the other side. There wasn’t really an option to do an extended ride though, since we really didn’t want to risk him hurting the knee more, and he was a bit nervous about running out of battery. He didn’t need to; it was a 25 mile loop, he started with 4 bars and finished with 3. Lots of range left. Easily could have done West Alpine, even at full power. Maybe next time.