Meet Bombadil (my new e-bike)

We live in an area with an abundance of bike-friendly trails, so I thought it was about time we got bikes. Of course, we bought e-bikes.

I looked at several brands, especially Aventon and Lectric. Aventon didn’t offer a good small, folding bike, the kind I was gravitating toward. Lectric, on the other hand, sells their XP 4.0, probably the best-selling e-bike of any kind, of any brand. It’s not hard to see one “in the wild” as you drive here down the coast. However, I bought the Velotric Fold 1 + bikes, one in mango (for me) and one in blue (for my wife).

It was a long search. At first, I thought it would simply be a matter of stopping by a bike store, to listen to what they had to say, and then to buy something. Most of the people at the bike stores didn’t want my business as soon as they figured out I wasn’t there to buy a $5000 bike (or two $5000 bikes). It wasn’t, I think, a money thing—I don’t think they were on commission. My sense of it was that it was a cultural (and maturity) issue. I wasn’t buying a real bike, not one they would be caught dead on. I was somehow not relevant to them, not part of their bike culture. The salesmen (or sales boys or sales dudes, as was commonly the case) pretended to know nothing about the cheap e-bikes—those were just there for customers to buy, those were all the same.

Fine with me. But it took more research, lots of e-bike YouTube reviews, and lots of Reddit pages. Sort of like buying a camper van, albeit on a smaller scale.

I finally settled on Velotric. It had a better feature set and good reviews. It came with better hardware than most of the rivals (a better gear system, better brakes), and it is the most waterproof of the folding bikes (important as I live in a foggy area and we plan to carry these on the back of an RV van starting next year). And it offered the best colors.

The manufacturer claims it will get sixty-eight miles on a charge, which I don’t believe, even if I rode on the most energy-conservative settings. Even though, after a 20-mile ride, the five-bar battery indicator still had four bars. I’m quite sure I won’t get to sixty-eight, but my confidence in getting to the mid-forties is very high, reinforced by my recent rides.

Next, I needed to think about all the accessories. For a while post-purchase, it seems, buying a bike turns into a buying-other-stuff hobby. 

Though I don’t go fast—I start to have doubts about my personal safety at about 15 miles per hour—I’m finding that riding an e-bike is fun, it’s a blast, and for no particular reason to which II can point. I’m starting to plan my vacations around biking, picking out places with interesting bike trails, ones suitable to my kind of e-bike.

The Velotric comes fully assembled, with an impressive number of zip-ties that need to be cut. It comes with a headlight, rear light (both of which come on when it gets dark), brake light, and turn signals. It will need more air in the tires when it arrives, but otherwise you are ready for your first ride.

I named mine Bombadil.