With my health declining I don't have the oomph to get very far on my bike any more, so a while back we decided to get me an ebike. However, Martin's got a lot going on at the moment and I don't really have the knowledge to figure out which one to buy, so nothing happened for a while.
Then a couple of weeks ago, I thought I should just have a look on TradeMe and see if I could come up with a shortlist for Martin to go through. It seems that thought came from God :-) I came up with a list of around 8, but one seemed particularly suitable. When Martin looked, that one stood out to him, too. It was brand new, and reduced from $1700 to $700 as it didn't have as powerful a motor as people expect from an ebike. Other than that, it seemed like exactly what I wanted - and an incredible price.
We arranged to borrow a car from a friend, and went out to have a look at it. We didn't think it'd fit in the car, but Martin could go back later on the bus and ride it home. We had a look at it, both found we could get it up some reasonable hills, and decided to buy it even though it was also making an error message for us that the bike shop people weren't seeing, as it seemed like God's provision for us. It even fitted into my friend's car, so we took it home there and then!
Back at home we were able to reliably make it make the error, and figured out that it's the motor cutting out due to being overstressed. All you need to do is take your feet off the pedals for a few seconds and it sorts itself out :-) It can be a bit of a pain, but it's easy enough to work around. We also found it has a 'walk' mode where you hold down a button and it trundles itself along beside you, which has turned out to be immensely useful on hills it can't be ridden up. It's small motor also means it's uncommonly light for an ebike, plus it uses relatively small amounts of battery. I'm currently running the battery from full to empty to see what it can do, and so far it looks like it may do in excess of 100km(!) per charge. It might not be what most people want, but it looks like it'll suit me very well indeed :-)
We bought it on the Friday, and on the Monday I used it to get back to Eric Armishaw Reserve - one of my favourite places, and somewhere I haven't been for a few months :-)
Thursday of that same week we were planning to go camping at Te Haruhi Bay in Shakespear Regional Park - around 7km from the Gulf Harbour Ferry. We'd hoped friends could pick us up and drop us off, but they turned out to be going overseas. Could I go on my new bike?? It's battery seemed up to it, but the carrier had no attachment points for panniers.
A bit of a look at our various craft/hardware supplies and both the panniers I usually use were attached - one permanently and one removeably :-) I'm keen to eventually get a basket for the front and replace the pannier clips with something more friendly to my arthritic finders, but this would be fine for now!
So less than a week after we bought the bike we were on the ferry!
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| Me on the new bike |
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| Safely arrived. Unfortunately one bag came off Martin's bike en route, but we eventually re-connected with it, thanks to a kind member of the public and a ranger. |
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| Glorious sunset the first night |
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| so clear! |
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| me swimming in surprisingly not-cold water |
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| our campsite - complete with our own water tap in the centre at the back. It was the last weekend of the school holidays and busyer than we are used to, but still pretty chill. |
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| my view when resting |
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| so many kererū |
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| Australian rock lilies all around the Gulf Harbour area - so pretty |
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| heading home - the only grey day |
And Martin doing a good job of figuring out how to wash and dry everything in the apartment :-)
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