First couple of weeks with the bike

So I've owned and ridden the Neo Prox for a couple of weeks now (save a couple of weather days) and here's my initial impressions:

The Bike:

• Overall great, but there's a lot to get used to. My muscle memory is based on the Capital Bike Share bikes, which are frickin' tanks (as they should be).  While the Prox is nicely built its just not the same as the rental bike build wise. Those things can take a lot of punishment. Since I just plunked down a wad of money for this bike and am responsible for its care and maintenance I'm not so cavalier when riding it as I could have been on the rental bike.
• The smaller wheels and slightly smaller handlebars means it feels a little more like turning a razor scooter than a bike at times.
• I miss the cruise control on the Path+ (more on that below).
• Because of the design (lower frame, longer handlebar stem that breaks into two) I can feel more flex in the handlebars. Its still pretty solid, and I'm not really worried that I'll do any damage, but what little flex there is takes a little getting used to.
• Brakes are a little mushy.
• Can get too and from work on a single charge.

A little more about this last point. For the first couple of days I was using standard pedal assist as I rode through town on the way to work, and then switching to full throttle control while on the Capital Crescent Trail, much like I did during last summer's test.  On the way home I use standard pedal assist all the way back. In this configuration I get the blinking battery symbol about a half a mile from home, indicating that I'm about out of power. So the battery has been just covering the round trip.

Unfortunately, unlike the Path+ I was using last summer the Prox doesn't have cruise control, which means I have to hold the throttle open the entire half an hour or so that I'm riding. Well, the weather has been especially cold lately andI'm cutting down on the blood circulation to my thumb and index finger when holding throttle open. Even though I have gloves on these fingers go numb in this weather pretty quickly. So lately I've switched from going full throttle to using a higher level of pedal assist on the Capital Crescent Trail; I no longer am holding the throttle, plus the constant pedaling keeps the blood flowing and the body warm & I still get to work without being a sweaty mess. In this configuration I've been doing the round trip and still have a bar or two left on the battery meter.

The Commute:

• The weather's been cold as hell, but the nice thing about biking is I really don't notice it. As long as its not raining cold really isn't that bad.
• I'm consistently hitting just over an hour for the commute. Maybe 5 minutes longer on average than the walk/metro method.

As for the weather my gear is nothing really fancy. My helmet seems to keep my head warm enough, and as for clothes I basically layer up: T-shirt, shirt/sweater, fleece (I have a couple of Old Navy fleeces that were cheap and warm), this cycling jacket in yellow (nowhere near as fancy as the cycling jackets you find in stores, basically a thin wind breaker with some pockets; from China; cheap and effective when worn over the fleece) and these gloves (also from China, also cheap and effective). 

First time on the metro in a while...

Even when I was using the rental bike I rarely missed a bike home due to weather. Cold I can deal with; rain I can deal with; cold + rain I can sort of deal with (a couple of times I was foolish enough to think I could beat the imminent rain only to get caught on the trail in a cold-ass downpour. Would rather have not been there but it wasn't the end of the world). Snow and ice, however, I'll skip. 

Side Story: Believe it or not Montgomery County does a good job of cleaning the Capital Crescent Trail of snow. Considering the roadways should be their major focus the fact they get to it at all is kind of amazing. I discovered this in December when we got the first snowfall of the season. It was a Friday and the office was closed early to give everyone a fighting chance to get home at a reasonable hour. The roads didn't look too bad, so I hopped on the rental bike and told myself that if the trail looked bad I'd turn around and take the Metro. Low and behold the trail looked to be in pretty good shape, good enough to ride on gingerly. So I pressed on, completely forgetting that the trail leaves Montgomery County and enters the District at some point. Well, that point is where the clean trail stopped and the cross-country-skiing-perfect trail began. Again, I really can't complain. Considering the District has a hard enough time to plow the roads most of the time the Capital Crescent Trail should be very low on their "to clean" list. I had to push the bike the last couple of miles until I hit Georgetown. Not fun.

Anyway, due to the weather the last two days have put me back on the Metro.

I finally purchase an eBike

Even if the Path+ was too expensive and I ended up not buying it I still kept my eye on the state of eBikes in case something that was cheaper (but not a price of crap) came along. When talking with the Hybrid Pedal guys about bikes I had mentioned the issues with the Path+ (size and price being the biggest) and they had recommended looking at smaller (20 inch wheel) "city bikes," specifically the Easy Motion Neo Prox.

One of the resources I would check into from time to time was Electronic Bike Review and their review for the Easy Motion Neo Prox was very favorable.

The recurring theme of smaller bikes in general is that they're usually full of compromises. Either they're underpowered or their quality isn't as good, but the Prox looked like it was a solid bike that could get the job done. Considering it was about $700 less than the Path+ also helped.

Figuring I needed a pretty good economic case in hand to convince the Wee Lass (and, frankly, myself) that I wasn't dropping $1,700 on a fancy toy I whipped up a quick analysis of what I spend on commuting to and from work.

Assuming that I commute 5 days a week for 48 weeks a year my metro costs, assuming that I took it to and from work, come out to $1,824 annually. But, this hasn't been the norm in the last 6 months, so I looked at best and worse case scenarios metroing in the morning and rental biking it home. Best case scenario assumed I could do the entire trip with both legs under half an hour, so no incurring any additional fees. This knocked my commuting expenses down to $987 annually ($912 metro + $75 annual rental bike fee). Worst case scenario assumed that I went over the half-an-hour grace period on one leg every trip ($1.50 per trip). This brought my annual commuting expense to $1,347. So the payback on the price of the bike was anywhere between 1 to 2 years, depending on how you looked at it.

Luck would have it earlier this month Hybrid Pedals ended up having a sale on the Prox, knocking $200 off of the price which basically sealed the deal.

So that's the story of how I ended up with the bike. My posts going forward will be about using over the next year or so.

At what point will you get to the eBike?

Hold your horses; I'm getting to it.

So all during the summer my routine was metro to work and bike home using the Capital Bike Share bikes and all was good: I'm getting exercise and I'm saving some money. So my next though was "can I cut out the metro altogether?" There were a couple of issues though.

1. The home commute is, on aggregate, downhill. From Bethesda to K Street the elevation drop is roughly 250 to 300 feet. Its no so great that you can coast, but its noticeably harder going to Bethesda than from.
2. There are no showers at our office.

My fear was, even if I could make the trip from home to the office in a reasonable amount of time (lets assume it would take 10 minutes longer due to the elevation change) I'd still arrive a sweaty mess. During my rides home I would basically soak through whatever t-shirt/shirt combination I was wearing, and that was going the easy way. One could only imagine what I'd look like after biking 7 miles uphill.

So this is what got me thinking about the eBike. The theory went "use the motor to assist on the way to work to keep effort, thus sweat, to a minimum on my way to work, ride the bike home normally on the way home." eBikes aren't cheap though and I didn't want to plunk down a lot of coin on something that may not work out. However, if I could rent an eBike for a test run....

This is how I discovered Hybrid Pedals. When searching for "ebike rentals Washington DC" they popped up. So I gave them a ring. It turns out that they used to have a service where they rented Pedego bikes to tourists, but they had recently shuttered that business. "I'm looking to maybe purchase an eBike, but I'd like to test it for a week. Could I possibly rent one of their stock?"

"Absolutely!"

So I headed down to their store, tried out a couple of bikes and ended up renting the Currie Tech iZip E3 Path + for $250 (which could be applied to the purchase price if I wanted to buy it).

That's a mouthful of a name.

For a week I used the Path + to get to and from work and, on the whole, validated the concept. I could get to work in about the same amount of time it takes me to walk/metro, so my morning routine wasn't really affected in any way, and when I arrived at work I wasn't a sweaty mess. As for the bike itself...

Likes:

• I know this is going to sound like a "no-duh" but it felt and handled like a bike. Other than the additional weight of the battery / hub motor it felt no different than riding a normal bike, including when I used to pedal assist at all.
• Speaking of pedal assist: it had it. For those who don't know what that is, the bike senses when you pedal and applies force to assist. There are a number of levels of assist from "helping you just a little when you're starting from a full stop and going up hills" to "the bike's doing 90% of the work." The lower the assist, the farther you can go on a single charge.
• Speaking of range: it was great. According to Currie Tech you should be able to go 25 miles on flatish ground on the highest level of pedal assist or full throttle. Since the ride to work is 11 miles and I never ran that at full throttle the entire way I never came close to exhausting the battery.
• Cruise control. Yes, this sucker had cruise control. If you're running throttle only, once you hit the speed you want you can kick in cruise control and the bike will continue to maintain that speed until you apply the breaks. Holding the throttle open for a long time can start to strain your hand, so this was really appreciated.

Dislikes:

• Weight. Since the motor is in the back wheel and the battery sits directly above it this sucker is back heavy. As I mentioned above it wasn't noticeable when riding, even with the motor turned off, but picking up the bike (which I had to do to go up and down the stairs to my townhouse) was kind of unwieldy.
• Size: this isn't a real complaint of the bike, but of storing the bike in my house. I have no garage, and live in a townhouse with a wife and three kids. Space is at a premium. For the week I had the bike it took up a lot of room in the dining room.
• Price: $2,400. This was a really nice bike, but $2,400 was too rich for my blood.

So as much as I would have loved to have continued using the bike I regretfully returned it and continued with my hybrid metro/rental bike commute.

So why the eBike? Pedaling too good for you?

So why am I riding an eBike in the first place? In a word: laziness.. and cheapness. Wait, that's at least two words. Let me explain...

I hate exercising.  Well, that's technically not true. What I hate is exercising for the sake of exercising. I cannot go for a run, ride a bike, take a swim or lift any weights simply for the need to getting fit. I find it all terribly boring, thus something I don't continue doing on any regular basis.

On the other hand I don't want to die of a heart attack or diabetes any time soon either. So my solution has always been to make exercise part of something else. For instance when I was single the grocery store was about half a mile away from my apartment so instead of driving to the store I would walk. Always take the stairs over an elevator. Ride a bike when appropriate. My current house is about a half a mile from a metro stop and my work sits on top of the Bethesda metro station, so I walk roughly a mile a day during my daily commute.

This is all well and good, but anyone who rides the Metro knows its not exactly cheap. $3.80 during rush hour each way to be precise, and this is where my cheapness comes in. While $7.60 a day is cheaper than owning and maintaining a second car its still adds up to a nice chunk of change over time.  A few years ago when the Capital Bike Share came to town I grabbed an annual membership for half price via a living social deal (about $40 for a year). Since there were about 4 bike docks within a five minute walk from my house it seemed like something worth trying at that price. I found it to be very handy service and have renewed my membership. During the summer months I experimented with using the bike shares to ride home. Unfortunately the closest bike racks were located at the UDC metro station which required me to still use the metro (thus spend $$$) and the commute would take me down Connecticut Ave during rush hour, which isn't exactly the safest thing to do. You're either on the road pissing off drivers or on the sidewalk pissing off pedestrians.

Thankfully some time in 2014 two things happened: 1) Capital Bike Share expanded into Bethesda and put two bike racks within spitting distance of my office and 2) something bad happened one afternoon in the Bethesda metro. Bad enough that the metro station was closed *and* the fire and rescue trucks completely blocked the bus terminal so all public transportation was hosed, and I had tickets to a Nats game that night so hanging around until all was well wasn't a great option.

"Okay, I have a bike rental membership, I should be able to get to the next stop at Friendship Heights." This is what led me to discover the Capital Crescent Trail. It crosses Woodmont Ave about 3 blocks from my office. Perfect. It got me to Friendship Heights and home in time to catch the first pitch.

This got me to thinking: can I realistically ride home via the trail? The map showed that I could take the trail for roughly 7 mile, at which point I'd be dumped onto K St. in Georgetown. From there it appeared to be only a couple extra miles via bike friendly roads. So, one summer Friday I bailed out of work early and attempted it.

The commute

Needless to say, since I hadn't used the rental bikes to go more than 2 or 3 miles at a clip, let alone 11; that first trip home was brutal. But it did prove it was possible, and cheaper than using the metro.

Capital Bike Share pricing is that any trip less than half an hour is "free." If you have an annual plan ($75) then any trip between 31 and 60 minutes costs $1.50. There are a couple of bike docks right where the trail ends on K street, which is about the halfway point time-wise for the entire commute. During the first few weeks of riding I was clocking about 30 - 40 minutes per leg, so at worst I was paying $3.00 per trip home: a savings of $0.80 a day. This, however, improved pretty quickly as I got used to riding the bike. After about a month I could do Bethesda to K street under half and hour about half the time, and consistently beat half an hour on the K street to home leg. This made my commute home roughly $0.75 a day; a savings of $2.95 a day. Saving money and 11 miles of bike riding exercise a day. Not too shabby...

So what exactly is this?

Yeah, its a stupid blog title name, but I couldn't think of anything better (its a play on "A Year in Provence"... don't ask, it just sort of popped in my head). Essentially I wanted to document a year of using the Easy Motion NEO Prox as my primary mode of transportation to and from work.

I bought mine from Hybrid Pedals of Arlington, Virginia in late January (great folks; if you're looking for an electric bike and you live in the DC area go check them out).