Status-Q

Today I took my car in for a service, and, since the dealer is on the far side of town and I couldn’t face the hassle of loading and unloading a bike, I’d booked a courtesy car for the day. But as I walked into the showroom, there was a sign saying “Ask about our electric loan bikes.” So I did. And a little while later I was cruising home on a very nicely-built machine from A2B. Not sure of the exact model, but it was pretty similar to this:

Now, I’ve always been pretty skeptical about battery-boosted bicycles, thinking they were really for the elderly or lazy. But having done ten miles or so on one today, I’ve largely changed my mind. Here’s why:

• It was a substantial bike: big tyres, good suspension, solidly made, with all the accessories. Because of its weight, you wouldn’t want to cycle it very far without the battery assistance. But with the power boost, it was an easy cycle, even up slopes, and gives you the benefits of more robust engineering: really good disk brakes, a solid carrier, a decent kickstand and large tyres which took kerbs, potholes and slippery patches in their stride. There was also plenty of battery power for some good lights, and a trip computer telling you various interesting bits of info as you went along.
• You have to keep pedalling. Not very hard, I grant you, but this isn’t a motorbike: you do get some exercise – in fact, the battery only pushes you along when you are doing so. It’s not nearly the exercise you’d get from a regular bicycle, but remember, I had chosen to use this instead of a car, not instead of a bike. And a car would have given me no exercise at all. You can, of course, pedal harder if you want to, or turn down the level of assistance that the battery gives, if you feel the need to be more virtuous.
• It was fast, even in the rain. What do I mean by that? Well, these things are normally limited to 15mph – not record-breaking by any means, but it’s a pretty good cycling speed when pottering around town. And the ease of getting up to that speed, and maintaining it, and resuming it when slowed down, meant that I actually moved from one place to another much faster than I would have done on my normal bike, unless I were really looking for a work-out. I was moving with the traffic, rather than having it whizz past me. And then, on the way back this evening, I was caught in a downpour. I realised that, had I been wearing full waterproofs, trousers and all, on my regular bike, I would have arrived at my destination sweating profusely. On this, I was really quite comfortable.

So, add all of that to that the fact that it was really rather fun, and I find myself looking at electric bikes in a new light. I genuinely believe I would use two wheels, rather than four, in many more situations if I had one of these. I would get less exercise than when I took my normal bike, but I’d get it much more often. And I’d be more willing to carry heavily-loaded panniers, and to cycle in inclement weather, than I am now.

All of which is good… but these things don’t come cheap. The one I used was somewhere in the £1500-2000 range, so I’m unlikely just to rush out and buy one. But I’m a lot more tempted now than I was before I tried it…

Here’s a quick and simple recommendation. About three years ago I decided I needed a new all-in-one remote control, since my (splendid and extravagant) old Marantz RC2000 mk II was struggling to keep up with the latest innovations in infrared.

So, after some pondering, I looked at the Logitech Harmony series – which I’d first seen at a CES show long ago, before they were even part of Logitech. The basic idea is that you use a special website and utility to put in details of the hardware you’ve got – which models of TV, Amp, DVD, etc – and how they’re connected together. It asks questions like “When you want to turn up the volume on the TV, do you use the TV or the amplifier?” Then you plug your remote in to a USB port and it gets programmed with all the appropriate codes and configuration. I went for a middle-of-the-range one, the Harmony One, and started thinking of all the ways I’d be able to customise it to make it do what I wanted.

And… I didn’t need to. After I’d set it up with something pretty close to the default configuration, it just did what I wanted out of the box. And has done so ever since. I haven’t gone back and fiddled with it once, which, knowing my propensity for such activities, is quite a recommendation.

Looking at the collection of gadgets on my bedside table makes me wonder whether I’m dull and unimaginative, or stylishly coordinated…

(For the curious, the three similar-looking devices on the right are my Kindle, iPad, and iPad mini. I don’t normally need them all in the same place at once! The thing on the left is my GPS logger and the watch is, of course, a pebble.)