Hello folks,
This is my first post but I have been lurking this website for a good month. I am a 50+ dude who lives in the wonderfully dangerous (traffic wise) city of Los Angeles, CA. I have been motorcyclist-only for four years and recently took up the car again, because of the increased water falling out of the sky this year, so they said. However, I don't like driving a car in LA, it makes me crazy, besides being so inefficient here in LA. My weekday commute is very short, about 5 miles on most days with one ten mile day. I have hated to drive or start my motorcycle with all my gear for such a short ride. I really can't ride a normal bike because a rare disease has left me with only one inefficiently functioning kidney. Besides taking care of urinary filtration the kidney also secretes a hormone to the bone marrow that stimulates the body's production of red blood cells, which carry oxygen. As a result, a by product of the disease I have is a chronic anemia. The anemia inhibits the amount of exertion I can do before it stresses the oxygen flow to my neurological and muscular systems. Ergo, the electric bicycle has come to my rescue.
Two months ago, I didn't know anything about electric bikes. Now, thanks to the internet and this site (thank you, Court & Co.) I can actually go into a bike shop and understand what they are talking about... even ask questions and make sense of the answers. Still, in real life experience I am a complete novice. My last real love affair with pedal power was long ago when I had my gold Schwinn Sting Ray. Damn, I loved that bike. My friends and I used to ride around all day long, back and forth to school, up in the hills on dirt trails, and doing our little stunts that ended up with a more than a few stitches, scraps, head traumas and broken bones. Lots of fun. So now I begin a new quest to find my new pedal+electric powered ride. The choices are enormous. Here is a list of bikes that I have ridden or at least seen: Stromer ST1, Emotion Evo Cross, Trek Lift+, BM Nighthawk &Shadow, Specialized Turbo, Raleigh Miceo+ and Izip Dash & e3 Peak (2015) plus the new Dash (2016). I had very good experiences with them all, some quibbles but not many at all.
The questions become what do I want, how will I use it and who do I want to buy it from. First, I want a bike that I can get to work on during the week and one that will lessen my carbon footprint in an efficient and reliable manner. An urban commuter bike that can haul limited groceries and office supplies. I like the mountain type bikes but I really think mountain trails are not in my immediate future, mean city streets are my domain. It is raining (thank you rain dancers) so I want fenders. I teach at night so it needs lights plus a utilitarian rack. I'm not a big guy, 5'7" and about 145 lbs so it doesn't need to have a huge motor or battery. I want to use it everyday to commute and I think I can, especially living in SoCal. I live within 5 miles of downtown LA and the city is doing better on bicycle traffic but the streets are still pretty mean and congested with aggressive and/or distracted drivers in bumper to bumper rivers of steel.
So now that I have determined what kind of bike I want/need and how I propose to use it the remaining question becomes local shops that will service it. Most of the shops I have been to that offer the widest variety of options are in Santa Monica, about 12 miles and about four or five different socio-economic realities from me. I don't have a car that can haul an bike (Mazda MX-5) so I'm looking for a closer bike shop but most of them are purely pedal power shops, with one notable exception that carry the new Trek line. Some smaller bike shops carry some e-bikes but they are not dedicated electric bike shops like I found in Santa Monica and the San Fernando Valley, further away from me.
I'm still in the trying out phase but it's hard to pass up the end of the year seasonal sales. I have a couple of more bikes to try out (in between seasonal last minute shopping for other people) before I make a decision. I think I want to head back to the Trek shop and check out a few more bikes before making a final decision. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
