New Bike, Off Grid
The past three days had been a bit transitional thanks to a very severe storm on Wednesday clocking 70 knot winds (80+mph, 95mph recorded in one area) that did a heck of a job trimming trees and power lines without discrimination in several counties in northern Virginia. Our county being one badly hit in the rural western stretches, centering in my neck of the woods...or what used to be woods but now resembles a devastation of broken limbs and branches everywhere and scattered downed trees blocking roads. Many many venerable old trees centuries old were knocked flat when those winds roaring through. It was heartbreaking to see the horror of tangled downed electrical wires among the broken trees, and power poles snapped like matchstick.
In the midst of fine tuning our 2nd day of alternative survival lifestyle "Off The Grid", including strategies for keeping the electric car charged while waiting for the power to resume - something we would not see until the following day - I received a phone call. My newly purchased Gazelle C380+ had arrived and was ready for pickup.
Everything else was put on hold for the 1 hour trip west where the Grid was still happily keeping the lights on and the fast chargers were dispensing electrons to recharge my depleted car battery back to 100% within 30 minutes before freeing me to head down the street to pick up the new bike.
I hadn't planned to ride the bike as soon as I got back home, but G called to see if I wanted to take a spin around the block to check out the aftermath of the storm's devastation. Althought the late heat and humidity was ramping up by the minute, the request was impossible to refuse. I hopped on the new Gazelle, met up with G coming down the road to my place on her Vado, and off we went on a tour.
It was like visiting a recent battlefield with Ma Nature claiming partial victory. Downed power lines were noticable everywhere there was the most damage - snaking across the gravel roads, draped across stone walls, and stretched to the ground under the weight of uprooted trees. Line poles were randomly snapped in half like twigs, or their crosspiece tops were ripped loose and dangling to the ground (as in the photo below). And yet a bit further down the roads everything was perfectly fine, every tree upright, not a leaf disturbed. The countryside looked as if nothing had happened. It was all so surreal.
Seemed like every gravel road had a work crew involved in cleanup and power restoration, oftentimes their vehicles taking up the entire width of the road with just enough space for a person to walk past, and for G and I to thread our way through after we had stopped to talk to the men about the cleanup.
Happy to say my new bike performed flawlessly throughout the entire "Tour de Devastation". The Bosch motor is a tad noisy with a high pitched whine which is a bit annoying, but the Nuvinchi variable speed hub is a dream. Was surprised the stock seat was so comfortable, and the springloaded seat post was perfectly adequate for the bumpy surface of the roads. I've decided to keep both and not replace them. The bike is smooth as silk on the paved roads - which G and I took at one point to circumvent one gravel road still blocked by tree fall and downed wires and repair crews. A second detour took us through a private estate (we both know the owners well) to see many of their trees uprooted by the horrific storm. The owners told us later that they lost over 50 mature trees.
13 miles later we were back in our neighborhood with enough visuals of the damage to last us a lifetime. Our area was still wrapped in the power outage so there wasn't a chance for me to see (yet) how quickly the Gazelle's battery would recharge. I'd had to wait until 9pm for the Grid to become available.
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