Rachel:

I’m so glad this enables you to continue to bicycle tour and look forward to reading about your travels!  

Mark:

Me too!

I've started planning for my second e-bike tour. Like the first, it will start from the NC/TN border to save me two thousand feet of climbing and go north using roads I've mostly ridden on earlier tours.

My younger daughter, who, with her husband and now three of our five grand kids, lives near us in Greer SC. She and her husband met at grad school, UVA , in Charlottesville VA, and married and moved down to SC about 15 years ago. Now they are moving back up there because lots of his family are near there and she got a great new job near there. Their youngest, and our only, grand daughter, has her second birthday this April so we will be going up there for that and, weather and COVID permitting, I'll ride up and back.

My first tour, in 1995, was to ride up to Washington DC where my sister and her family lived. I rode up to using the Blueridge Parkway, which ends in Waynesboro VA and US 340 and rode back riding Skyline Drive from Front Royal to Waynesboro and then mostly using US 11 to Johnson City TN. I was 49 years old and in excellent shape - I was climbing about 20,000 feet a week on my regular rides - so I could do 75 mile days with about a mile and a half of climbing a day on the Parkway. Now I couldn't do that even on one of my e-bikes!

Washington DC was also a stop on several of my tours after that so I have four tour reports that include riding US 11 between here and there. Bike 76 uses much of US 11 from Waynesboro to Damascus VA which is near the TN/VA border and parts of it are used instead of US 11 on the route I developed for getting to/from DC. I've been playing with and remembering - most of those rides were over 20 years ago - that routing for the past few days using Google Maps and other mapping software. Here is a link to the most recent version Google map: https://goo.gl/maps/znxB36rnUxArrs8YA I've heard that some folks may have trouble using this link. It works fine for me and, in fact this my only way to get to that map.  I first hi-light it and then alt click on it. That brings up a menu that includes go to https://goo.gl/maps/znxB36rnUxArrs8YA

Wayne, I rarely ride bike paths in the US although I have, over many years, ridden a few while touring. I think you are correct in considering this a legacy issue which, as e-bikes become common, will be resolved. I expect state laws will be passed that  restrict the power output that is allowed on e-bikes used on bike paths. There are serious safety issues with the use of high powered bikes on bike paths. Hopefully not too many serious accidents will be caused by powerful - one or two horsepower ;-} - e-bikes speeding on those paths before a state gets around to making that illegal. 

While e-bikes are still a small minority on the roads and bike paths in Asheville, I regularly see e-biker riding by my house. Like many places in Asheville, the road in front in front of my house is on a moderate hill and, when bicyclists are riding by my house heading south, it is easy to spot riders who are on e-bikes and using those e-bikes like mopeds. I have no problem with that since that use makes sense and, in a country with usually very poor public transportation, it is the least expensive and the most ecologically sound way for to travel moderate distances.

On warmer days, I often see groups of a dozen or so tourists riding matching e-bikes on guided tours that use parts of my regular riding routes. Usually they cruise by me going twice as fast as I am going, even on those days when I'm riding on an e-bike.  I think this is a great way for adventuresome tourists to experience some of the hillier, and prettier, parts of Asheville. I have, while riding, interacted with folks on those tours when they are stopped. In one case I was actually on one of my e-bikes. Those interactions, like the interactions I've had, over the past decade, with folks touring on e-bikes in Europe and, in one case, Canada, have been good.

Sounds like a great trip!  In may 2015 we biked from Charlottesville, NC to New York, City.  We really loved biking on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  I really want to go back and bike in Autumn.  I look forward to reading about your travels!

In the 1990s, I liked biking US 11, which parallels the Parkway in southern Virginia better than biking the Parkway. 11 is roughly one third as hilly as the Parkway  and has views that are almost as good and much better services along the way without having,  other than Roanoke, any city which is really bad to bike through. Bike 76 routed around Roanoke almost fifty years ago (!) and I plan to use its route on that part of this tour. I rode through Roanoke several times in the 90's and didn't like it, and I suspect it is much worse now.

As for the Parkway, it is less than ten miles from my house and I've spent thousands of hours bicycling on it, but long ago, I gave up bicycling on it in Leaf Season. The last time I toured on it in the fall,  I bailed out  after I rode it south to near Blowing Rock.  Several miles before Blowing Rock the Parkway had become a moving parking lot! It was neither enjoyable or safe to ride on it.  I had planned to spend the night Blowing Rock but after I rode into Blowing Rock,  I found that the only motel room available cost several hundred dollars for a night and even the nearby camp sites were hard to come by.  Wild camping on the Parkway is against the law and that law is strictly enforced  with big fines I called my best friend whose house, roughly 60 miles away, was where I had planned to spend the next night and he drove up to get me and my bike. 

My favorite time to ride the Parkway is when it is closed in the winter. It is, like hiking the back country, lovely, but a bit risky because if you crash no one is going to come along to help you and most the time you have no cell phone signal. One of my scarier experiences happened  riding it in March and getting careless on the last  section of  ice covered pavement  before the road up Mt Mitchell. I had been careful on many ice covered  parts before, but this last one looked harmless so I tried riding across it.

I made it roughly to the middle and the crashed gently on the wet ice. No big deal. I stood up carefully and tried to pick my bike up so I could get it and me off the ice. As I picked the bike up, my  feet slid out to either side of my body and,  as I fell, I heard both of my knees popping. I'd never heard that sound before! 

I found I was able to crawl so I  dragged  bike my bike to the side of the road. Then I realized that I was at least five miles from the nearest human being and I didn't know if I could walk or pedal. It turned out that walking hurt but pedaling was fine, so I was able to continue on to Mt Mitchell and  then ride 35, mostly downhill, miles on the Parkway to get back home.  It had taken me three years, but, as of that day, I had managed to ride from Asheville to Mt Mitchell and back every month of the year. It took some really unusually warm spells to make it possible for me to make that ride in the months between November and April!

Thanks, Scott. I'm a little late but I just noticed this thread today.

Hi Léo! I just noticed this forum topic today. Sorry to hear that you have heart problems. Isn't it good, though, that you have kept so healthy over the years with your cycling. As far as the difficult decision about what kind of e-bike etc., I can only endorse all of what Grampy Steve wrote. Our conversions were good (on our first ebikes) but not half as good as our bikes designed as ebikes. I doubt you would need a second battery. I don't and I can do 100 km easily, and I'm not that strong. Janos weighs a lot more than me and is older and therefore uses more support. He has a spare battery which he often needs when touring. At any rate I wouldn't buy a second battery - they aren't cheap - until you see you really need it. Good luck on finding the right solution for you! The main thing is you can keep pedaling and touring. 

Hi Léo and all,

Am a little late coming to this thread, 'cos we've been a bit distracted by the Siege of Downtown Ottawa these past three weeks.  

Still, it's a full and timely thread, and my thanks to Léo for opening it, and to all who have chimed in.

A few brief notes:

1)    Jon, I picked up the Bobby Zimmerman reference, but as I think you've learned, cross-cultural humour can be at best a tricky thing to use. 

2)   On e-bikes: After 74 journeys around the sun, I find myself saying to myself and to others, "One does what one can." A key corollary to that is, if an e-bike extends Life on Two Wheels, then it's OK by me.

3)    An additional source of info, Léo, is the Thorn Cycles Forum, esp because that includes commentary on joining an e-assist motor to a Rohloff.  You may already know of Andre Jute, but his comments on e-motors and gears are always valuable. (They are also quite technical, esp for people like me who are comfortable with bike mechanics but not-so-comfortable with electrics.) Anyway, here's the latest of several threads on the general subject: http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/...

4)   Lastly, interesting take on sainthood. My secularism aside, I always thought that what had held me back on that front was that I'd let my Latin lapse... Then -lo!-today I find that you don't need the Latin after all. Who knew?? 😉

Cheers,  John

 My apologies for not reading Mike's post sooner.

 While it is true that bikes built as e-bikes are going to be a simpler solution for someone like me who needs to start using an e-bike for touring, one should realize that, as far as I know, there aren't many  (any?) e-bikes that are built for touring.  It is quite likely that converting  a bike built for touring to an e-bike is going to be produce a better touring e-bike  than an e-bike not built for touring.

As for the conversion process, any half decent bike shop, can do it. Lots of people through out the world have done it for their own bikes.  The hardest part of a installing a mid-motor system requires the same bicycle mechanical skill as replacing a BB and installing a new crank. It only takes a few hours  to do and requires no electrical skill beyond plugging connector together.

I have a friend, who is totally non mechanical, who asked his bicycle mechanic, who had zero experience with e-bikes, to do it for him. No big deal. That mechanic did a good job. 

Unfortunately, my friend also has no sense of  mechanical  empathy and ended up damaging the system he had installed  by using it in ways that the manufacturer specifically told him would damage it. Then he ended up paying a lot more money for an ready made e-bike because he knew it would be supported by a dealer when he damaged it. 

The mid-motor is not just the most visually appealing solution . It is the most mechanically functional solution because it uses the gearing that the bicycle already has to match the  motor power range to the speed and slope the bike is dealing with and it keeps the weight of the motor low and centered. There is very elegant, and very expensive, German made mid motor system that I learned about from an earlier reference in this thread that allows  the use of triple crank setup with the, direct drive e-motor mounted completely on the other side  of the BB.  The inexpensive conversion kits that I have used only allow the outer two rings to be used because the gearing between the motor and the crank is on the same side as the rings.  With the motor assist and the over 3:1 gear ratio range of the 11/36 cassettes I have on all of my touring bikes, I can climb sustained 20% grades using the former middle ring and the motor matching the power I provide through the cranks. 

My CF conversion which I have used for loaded touring in mountainous conditions, currently only has a single front ring.  That was all I figured I needed to deal with climbing  the two 5 mile long 10% hills on my route last summer .  I knew there was  the possibility that the motor on the system would have overheated if I wasn't able to do half the work and I knew that I've lost about half of my sustained power output due to aging so, other than exhaustion on my part, I figured the bike and I could do it and we did.. 

The fact that I had to climb  one of those big hills in the sun with 100+ F effective temperature and no wind meant I mostly had to worry about overheating my body. Of course, I also also knew  I had the option, if I was overheating too much climbing those long hills,  to get off the bike and walk beside it as the motor did all the work getting the loaded bike up the hill and I only did the work required to get  me up. 

My e-bike setups - I actually have two different control setups  - can both be used to climb long super steep hills without overheating the bike because I can walk beside bike the  while the motor powers it up the hill.  There was a hill on my planned route last summer - I call it "the wall" - that is so steep that I had to stop every 100 feet or so to rest for a few minutes when I did it without assist in the past. I had enough problems with my body, not the e-bike, that I chose not to attempt that part last summer.  

I have been riding the extensive bike path system in Tucson this winter. I would estimate that 50% of the bikes I see are factory e bikes. They are identified by their thick tubing. Casual looks while passing don't identify too many bikes with the added boxes.

There is a popular recumbent specialty shop here, Ajo Bikes. Perhaps because it is their favored motor to use, but 'the' motor on trikes is the Bafang. I've been riding a couple of days a week with the recumbent group. All of the trikes I've seen on club rides have motors. On the path, I would estimate 19 out of 20 trikes have motors. They are easily identified as the cranks are right out front, with the motor visible. Trikes are very popular in Tucson. I would guess on a typical day I see 15-20 trikes. Two wheeled recumbents, maybe 1-2. 

One of the club riders is a mechanic at Ajo. Chuck said that the torque sensor makes a much more natural ride, it costs $100. extra and many riders don't go for that extra expense, but they should. He also said on Ajo's recommended Bafang, most riders get 80-100 miles. I thought that an impressive number, but had to remind myself I am in flat Tucson. 

I hope it is many years before it is physically necessary for me to ride an e assist. I would far rather ride an e assist than give up bicycling. Who knows what the evolution of e assist will be at that time. Certainly, it is changing quickly!

G'day Mark

Long time readers on this site will note that our last tandem tour was May 2018.

Since then Mary has had respiratory problems which she is just getting over and in my 80th year I am experiencing age related muscle loss which means that while I can still crack along on the flats when it comes to hills my legs say no thank you.

So today we went to see Rebecca at our local e-assist conversion centre and she has a Pendix on the shelf so we are getting the tandem converted. Mary, bless her, asked how much it weighed and Rebecca handed me the motor saying that she thought it was about 5kg and I nearly dropped it! The battery is probably another 3kg.

Kelly, I calculate that you have another 20 years before you will need e-assist!