ebike under the rainbow

[mindstalk]

Today was mostly spent indoors, making a quasi-mousse (just cream and chocolate), and manga and Discord stuff, but I finally kicked myself out of the house. I finally got a local bikeshare pass (Indego) recently, and decided to try it out.

(Why get bikeshare when I have a bike? Figured it might be nice to have the option. E.g. Friday I took Lyft to the Zoo, thought about biking home, and almost tried one instead of transferring buses, but got deterred by torrential rain.)

There were 3 'classic' bikes at the local dock, and I rode each one around the block, to get a feel for how they might vary. 1/3 of bike bells worked. The bikes are heavy and 3-gear -- annoyingly the gear twists in the opposite direction from my own bike. Posture more upright than I can get with my bike, which was nice to experience. Ride was clunkier/higher friction than I'm used to, but doable.

Then I tried one of the more numerous e-bikes, my first time on an e-bike. Interesting! Maybe it's this design of bike, but I was surprised there's no option for how much electric assist to get, like maybe you'd like to turn it off and just pedal, but you can't. Only control was the 3 gears. Assistance seemed to kick in a bit unpredictably. But yeah, I did go faster, especially uphill. I know I saw something about not getting assist over 17 MPH, and I wonder if it's speed governed, I wasn't able to hit 17. There is a ramp I could try next time.

Anyway, I left the block and went onto the river bikepath. Went up to the boardwalk with the ships, was surprised by things being open, talked to a guard who told me everything opened literally yesterday, then headed back as it started raining.

And. Saw. The most perfect rainbow of my entire life. Solid nearly horizon to horizon, with a clear double rainbow. I doubt the camera captured it all that well, but still, here's the album.

Comments

[mtbc]

Here in the UK, if I recall correctly, there's some limit to the speed at which one gets assistance (and one must pedal) or one's e-bike risks becoming a more heavily regulated (needs much better enforcement though) electric moped or somesuch.