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.