Every morning, I try to extend my daily trips. To be able to start working at decent hour, I set off for biking well before the dawn. Last night, I gave my Turbo Vado 5 another chance. The bike is factory equipped with a 600 lumen Supernova headlight yet to feel confident in the total darkness. I mount a 1700 lumen CatEye light on a spare bracket and also Knog Blinder Road R70 back on the seat-post. Car drivers see me too well and I found they seem to respect me more than they used to before
It's really cold at night with temperatures close to the freezing point now and persistent southerly winds are blowing (8 knots is a typical figure), so my return way is always upwind. This time, I decided to ride entirely in the Eco mode. And there was part of the route where the Vado really shone.
I use a Czech website and an Android app Mapy.cz which is free, includes route planning and GPS navigation, is in English and is good for whole Europe, I think. It even gives you weather forecast per route at given route point so you know what you are getting into (temperature, precipitation and wind); and it records your actual route (that is why I said bye-bye to Endomondo Premium). I normally select "Road bike" for route planning but was curious what the "MTB" mode could offer in our flat terrain. And I learned
I was sent by Mapy.cz into single track, unpaved country roads and into the fields. The roads were muddy and damaged by tractors but the mud has hardened due to low temperature. Then the Vado shone up! 29x2.0 tires, rigid fork, the bike geometry taken from MTBs, and the bike just zipped through all the muck! Very stable ride, full control, easy to find and follow the line. No suspension yet the ride was very smooth, mud, gravel or nasty little stones embedded in the ground.
The battery range for Vado 5 is still the weak point. 57.2 km (32.7 miles) under those conditions leaving me with 20% of battery in Eco mode. As the last 5% are unusable, this sets the real range to some 68 km (42 mi) of practical maximum range, which is not an impressive figure.
Yet to see gorgeous sunrise over the fields was worth of the trip ;-)
