Between my hiking, running, swimming, kayaking, canoeing, dog-walking, and general explorations, I rarely have the time to add biking to the mix. Living near, but not in, town, I like to use my bike as a means of transportation when possible, but even this I find myself doing less often that I’d like (the large hill up to my house not helping.) So when Crow Athletics, a running club based on Mount Desert Island, shared a promotion for Pedego Acadia that involved commuting to work for week on an electric bicycle, I jumped at the opportunity.
Now if you are a serious bicyclist, you might scoff at an electric bike as “cheating.” But for me, I didn’t see it as something I would use as in place of my regular bike, but instead of an alternative to driving around in my car. Not getting stuck in traffic behind slow tourist? Traveling with the breeze in my face with minimal effort? Reducing carbon emissions? Yes please!
The bike is extremely cool in that I still pedal, but can control how much effort I want to put into it. Coasting along a flat stretch, I can do most of the work myself. I come to a hill, switch up the motor to a higher level, and the electric engine will take over most of the effort to carry me up the hill if I so desire (which, frankly, on most hills I do desire.)
My goal is to not get in my car for the duration while I have the bike (with the exception of getting my dog out to places to walk her off-leash, she has energy she needs to burn, preferably NOT by her pulling me on the bike which could be scary and dangerous!)
DAY ONE
The bike – which I’ve now dubbed Ellie – arrives on Sunday afternoon. With recentdownpours of rain, I hadn’t visited my garden plot at the nearby Kelly Farm Preserve – a community garden owned by Maine Coast Heritage Trust – in over a week, and suspected that while my plants were well watered by the rain, the weeds must be running rampant. It seemed fitting somehow that my first trip on the electric bike should be to go tend to the plants that would soon feed me. So off I go, a little apprehensive, as it felt a little unnatural at first that when I would pedal, the bike would take off much faster than the effort I was putting in deserved.
I quickly discovered the downside of traveling by bike – cars! The cars going by me on my way to Bass Harbor were not that pleasant, and I often felt pushed further onto the narrow pot-hole-ridden shoulders than I wanted to be to ride comfortably, but I had been anticipating this.
I arrived at the community garden in no time, and after an hour of clearing out the weeds and spreading some compost, was ready to hop back on the bike. By the trip home, I felt I had mastered how the bike works. It was such a pleasant, warm, summer-y evening. It reminded me of the bike rides I would take around the neighborhood on summer evenings as a kid. I was fully enjoying the smell of the flowers I was riding by, and the freshly cut grass, and the spruce trees and rugosa roses and seaweed smells along the ocean, and the whiffs of barbecue as well as families started preparing their dinners.
I was so enjoying it I decided to take the long way home, and add an extra loop on down past Bass Harbor Lighthouse and Seawall, a beautiful stretch along the ocean in Acadia National Park. While twice as long, this had the added benefit of cutting off that stretch of unpleasant road with cars zipping by forcing me into potholes along the side.
I found that I could almost keep up with the cars in many places, maintaining a speed of around 25 mph once I was comfortable with the bike. And going back up the hill to my house, I got a distinct pleasure from just using the throttle and not using the pedals at all while going UP the hill, and past my neighbors around their fire-pit in their front yard. Did they notice I was going uphill without pedaling? Probably not! But I enjoyed it all the same.
Unfortunately, I left the bag of kale I had harvested behind at the garden – but all the more excuse to do the loop again early in the morning to retrieve the kale, and enjoy some more time with Ellie. It may have taken a bit longer than had I gone by car, but instead of returning home stressed from traffic, I had fun in the journey and returned home HAPPY! And in the end, isn’t that the point?
Outdoor Explorations ~ Acadia & Beyond 