For security reasons, I don’t usually post about a holiday while I’m away, but this one worked out perfectly because our ship got into Vancouver at 7 this morning.
I’m not going to review the cruise. It’s the Holland-America trip, Vancouver-Alaska-Vancouver, and it seems everybody we know has already done it. Also, for a British Columbian, the scenery is pretty much more of the same, but bigger. It is Alaska, after all.
However, one part of the trip gave me a new experience: a shore excursion on e-bikes. I’ve been a regular cyclist all my life, and I wasn’t sold on the e-bike idea, but I welcomed the chance to try it out on an extended trip. Well, it was only 6 miles, but I figured my butt wouldn’t be happy with much more than that, anyway.
So, one rainy morning we got off the ship in downtown Juneau and hopped into a van that took us who-knows-where into the Alaskan rainforest. It turns out our route was the maintenance road for an aqueduct that was built in the early fifties to bring water to the town from a lake they had just dammed up. It was an interesting construction: a pipe made with strips of Redwood, bound together by loops of heavy cable. I’ve seen smaller examples crumbling away on the Eric the Red trail on Grouse Mountain, but never one a metre and a half in diameter.
The Equipment
Holland America works with good sub-contractors, and they did this trip up right. Our driver was an experienced naturalist and a good rider as well. She brought us to a workshop at the parking lot with racks of rain gear and helmets, and skookum, new-looking bikes which weighed about 25 kilos.
The Ride
Despite the extra weight, I was pleased to find that it was quite possible to whip along at about 12-15 miles an hour without electrical assist. If you wanted a workout, you could accelerate quickly until your legs started to burn, then hit a touch of electric power and coast until the pain faded.
The other unexpected benefit of the power was how smooth it was for navigating twisty, slow spots in the trail. It is much easier to keep your balance going less than walking pace when you’re not moving your feet. Likewise with wet spots on the trail. If you pedal through a puddle your bottom foot always gets splashed, but on electrics you cruise through with pedals level and dry.
The other big advantage is the size of the tires, which absorb the shock of a rough road, and don’t seem to add the drag I thought they would.
The Disadvantage
As any pedestrian can tell you, these things are dangerous. The smooth, silent power gives a false sense of security, and any fool who can ride a bike has no difficulty hitting 30 klicks and a sharp rock in quick succession.
After a quick orientation, the guide led out. Everyone was hesitating, so I headed off behind her. As we went along, I realized that the guy behind me was having too much fun, whooping and hollering to his partner how proud he was of her. Which meant that she didn’t know what she was doing, and did little to ease my fears of the tires crunching about one bike length behind me.
At the first break, I found occasion to mention to the group my theory that the speed of an e-bike rises in inverse proportion to the number of times the rider has dumped in the bush. The response was unenthusiastic; I guess they don’t understand inverse proportions. I quietly waited while the others started, and then took a position at the rear where I could set my own speed.
Blending the Ride
I have also done a bit of motorized trail biking, and I had trouble learning to feed the gas throttle with a smooth wrist action. The e-bike throttle is handled lightly with two fingers, and the rest of your hand stays still on the handle, so the feed is automatically more even. I quickly learned to alternate between the two modes and was soon pedal-gliding comfortably along the trail.
The Bottom Line
I’m not running out to buy one of these monstrosities, but any time I get the opportunity for a trip on one, I’ll hop on and roar silently away. At my own speed.