On getting an electric bike…
I learned to bike in my 30s. It was my wife’s help and encouragement that made it possible. The excellent1 cycling infrastructure of Amsterdam played its part too - I could actually get somewhere I wanted to be on a bicycle here. Had we still been living in Bangalore, I don’t think I’d have learned to bike. I don’t see myself as someone who would’ve mustered sufficient motivation to overcome not just the non-existent cycling infrastructure but also the terrible traffic. And in some alternate timeline, had I still made it to Amsterdam without meeting my wife, I would’ve been quite content to use public transport or walk about2.
Within a few days of learning to bike, it became an act as natural as walking. But I still had a mental block that kept me from biking to work every day. That my commute involved cutting through the picturesque, historic canal ring of Amsterdam didn’t help. The route was meant to be savoured each day on foot, not rushed through on a bike.
A few years ago I landed a job that finally got me biking seriously. Fourteen kilometres a day - to my office and back. This was before the pandemic, so five days at office were still the norm. It was the fastest and cheapest way to get to work. Barring inclement weather or the occasional bouts of laziness, biking became my preferred way to commute. This was the first time the thought of getting an e-bike crossed my mind. Vanmoof had just started to rise in popularity here. We both knew friends who had purchased Vanmoof’s latest models and spoke favourably of their purchase. The wife and I even took test rides. But the clunky gear change mechanism of their then state of the art model didn’t sit well with either of us3. The lack of a detachable battery which would necessitate bringing the entire bike to our tiny apartment for charging was another factor that put us off. The other e-bikes of that time, especially from the staple Dutch brands (Batavus, Gazelle etc.) had felt clunky and heavy and so we did without one for the next few years.
All those days of working from home during the pandemic broke my cycling habit. My next jobs have again been a lot closer to our home. While biking is still the fastest way to get to the office, biking just 3-4 km somehow feels cheating. I do bike on some days but walking is my preferred way to get to work. It’s a 30-35 minute commute on foot and I get to take pictures, listen to a podcast or generally wool-gather.
Thanks to global warming, there is now at least a 6 month window (I’d say May-Oct) when cycling in Amsterdam is very pleasant. There are several small towns 15-20 kms from Amsterdam that make for great day trip destinations on your bike. We’d do one or two of these trips each summer but our legs would be so sore the next day that our resolution at the start of the summer to do these biking trips more regularly would fizzle out.
The wife again started considering getting an e-bike seriously a couple of years ago. I spotted a billboard4 for an up and coming direct to consumer Belgian e-bike brand called Cowboy and told her about it. Shortly after seeing the ad, we started spotting Cowboy bikes more regularly on the road. They weren’t available in bike shops but you could book a test ride on their website and someone would come to your home with one. Many people at the wife’s workplace already owned one. They spoke highly of the bike’s quality and Cowboy’s service. The wife booked a test ride and knew that she was getting one the moment it ended. The bike checked all the boxes for her - it was light, had a detachable battery and the step-through frame was the right size for her height - in a country where the average height is 182 cm (~6ft) that’s not a given. We ordered it online. It arrived a few days later and after minimal assembly, she was all set.
I took a ride too but hadn’t fully bought into the idea of an e-bike just yet. Besides, we didn’t want to put both our eggs in one basket - I’d keep looking for another brand.
Getting an e-bike really opened up distances for her. On weekends she’d casually ride down to Haarlem (a 40 km round trip) or Monnickendam (that’s another 32 km for a round trip) and still have energy to go to work the next day. On the handful of occasions I accompanied her, we’d either cut the ride short or I’d follow her from a great distance, out of breath and knees creaking from trying to keep up with her against 50 kmph wind.
Yes, the Netherlands is a flat country but even on a fine summer day, the wind can easily overcompensate for the lack of a climb uphill. But let’s not use the wind as an excuse here. Riding a manual bike for distances of 70-80 km over a weekend, even on a perfectly still weekend, would easily divest me of any delusions about my physical fitness. Paradoxically, I also worried about losing whatever fitness levels I did have by depending on e-bike - the mind saw an e-bike as a fancy crutch.
And so I held back for two more years. Perhaps because I have been ripe for a full-blown midlife crisis, a part of my brain started entertaining this fantasy where instead of an e-bike, I would get one of those light, carbon-fibre racing bikes. Surely, through this marriage of precision engineering and my brute force I would then be able to easily keep up with (and even fly past) my wife on her e-bike.
For the past three weeks we’ve been getting days that have been so perfect and idyllic that I’ve felt as if we are living inside an advertisement for summers. Naturally, the wife has been making the most of her e-bike and I’ve been accompanying trailing her on my manual bike. A ride back from one long trip where the wind knocked a good 5 km/h from my average speed, I finally opened up to the idea of getting an e-bike.
The wife who has been scouting the right e-bike for me ever since she got hers, couldn’t stand the thought of frittering another beautiful summer away and insisted that I go for another test ride. She even located a shop really close to our home that I could visit on a random Monday I had taken off from work. I opted to give Tenways CGO800S a shot. I took it along my office route which cuts through Amsterdam’s canal belt, has uneven traffic and the bridges over the canals present a short but decent incline. My test ride felt effortless, even joyful. I knew right then that this was it.
I have now had it for two weeks and we’ve already clocked over 120 kilometres. I had read that e-bike riders cover longer distances and so get same or more exercise as those riding manual bikes. This certainly rings true so far.
At 23 kg (including the battery) the bike is not much heavier than my current manual one of 19 kg. It also rides smoothly when the battery assistance is off. I’ve covered long stretches without battery assistance - only summoning it during periods of strong winds, when I need to catch a break after a particularly long stretch. Or when I’ve needed a little extra acceleration - for example when the traffic light turns green just as you have braked. Not ever having driven anything where an external force propels me (I don’t know how to drive or ride a scooter), I was worried I’d get addicted to speed. And while I admit it is thrilling to go from 0 to 25 km/h in under 10 seconds of light pedalling, it actually makes me lot less annoyed at having to stop for tourists crossing the bike paths heedlessly5. Say goodbye to road rage, say hello to traffic tranquillity?
Anyway, I hope to use the battery sparingly. I think of it like Mario stumbling upon a super star - a rare thing, makes you invincible for a short time and you are still liable to getting destroyed if you act rashly6.
I’ll leave you with a picture of the giant statue of the famous delftware kissing couple near the Zaandam ferry station. A 13 km round trip taken casually after a full day of work. When you have an e-bike, you are always looking to squeeze a ride in.
A giant statue of the Kissing Couple
I wouldn’t call it world-class because the cycling infrastructure here is in a class of its own. The state of what occasionally passes for cycling infrastructure in even the richest countries of the world is really quite pathetic in comparison.↩︎
Because Amsterdam does public transport and walking infrastructure equally well.↩︎
It’d make a loud click as you were pedalling and picking up speed. It felt jarring.↩︎
A bit of an anomaly for Amsterdam where there’s a handful of spots in the whole city where you would find such visual clutter.↩︎
Another feature of summer in Amsterdam.↩︎
The super star doesn’t save your life if you fall into a pit.↩︎