2 Wheels Maybe

[This week's minipost.] I am excited about this bike! I've been sitting on the Where are they now? draft version of this post for a while. After seeing the original crowdfunding campaign not make it for the Zooz, I feared that the bike would turn into vaporware, but I've been watching and have been elated to see that the electro-BMX-hooligan bike hasn't faded away. You see, I love my current e-bike as a commuter. For how and where I ride it, it is the perfect machine. But once in a while I think back to my first factory-built e-bike. It was this bike in silver:   The 24volt Currie E-zip Trails (bought on closeout at Best Buy) I was a dozen years younger and 35 pounds heavier than now. And it was a terrible bike, but I did not know it. I started commuting to work on it and quickly came to think of it as this: But I was wrong. It was designed for someone 100 pounds lighter than me who would ride it timidly. Riding home from work one day, the bike and I got air -  about 12...

[A new minipost series - it seems like every week I'm tempted by a new bike that just came out, but I don't find time for a full post - so let's go mini!!!!!] I've been a big fan of Monday Motorbikes since April of 2015 (when they were still called Bolt Motorbikes).Through each generation of the M-1, I 've watched the bike grow more impressive (and less expensive) and as a plethora of new e-mopeds have become available lately, Monday has kept pace by upgrading the original, by launching a step-thru model in 2019 - the Gateway , and this week they have announced a new top-tank model - the Anza! (Woohoo! This thing is cool and pretty darned affordable!) Find it on the Monday Motorbikes site I love that they've taken the old Puch-Magnum-style frame and adapted it to be a lightweight hardtail e-bike with a rear hub motor. Where the original was more of a motorcycle with pedals, this one is better equipped to compete with newcomer e-mopeds like the RadRunner, the Ju...

So the kid was turning twelve in the early part of July and we had been wanting him to have an ebike so he can keep up on our family e-bike rides. Before e-bikes were so popular, you could buy this at department stores! The Mongoose CX450 was a pretty cool bike - 15mph, 18 mile range, full suspension, front disc brake - sweet! After looking around for a bit (during a time when almost no bikes were available for purchase) we decided it was time to build one. A few years back I bought a Mongoose CX450 that had been stripped of its electric drivetrain. So I pulled it out of storage and got to work. Not our bike, but identical (I didn't take a before pic)     My first attempt at getting it together was to add a brushed motor like the original setup for the bike but I struggled to come up with a suitable bracket to hold the motor. Being a man with a welder and welding skills would have made it possible, but that's not me these days. So I came up with a Plan B - a brushless hu...

Pedaled Every Day this Week! It's been a great week! Lots of things fell into place, and I pulled a 100% bike commute week. Yep, Monday-Friday I have been free to ride to work. (And I ran errands on the bike on Saturday and Sunday.) I've noticed that I've been in a steadily better mood over the last seven days. Yes, the car is  quicker and offers better weather protection, but it dulls the senses. When you spend your days in a windowless office, you don't have many senses left for dulling. I look forward to the ride when it's cold. I look forward to the ride when it's sweltering. I never look forward to the drive. From this morning's ride Okay, I know a 100% bike commute may not sound like much, but 60% is often a struggle. I've reached that point in life where the generation before and the generation after both need a fair amount of help. That means errands and doctor's appointments and stores and pharmacies and...well, the bike is of...

The didn't-make-it-this-time  Indiegogo campaign So, how did I miss this one the first time around? A big, bad, electric BMX straight outta Fort Worth - bring this thing on! As I keep looking at klunkers, I keep running across the big-boy BMX bikes. I keep thinking I want one. In the early '90's I bought my first mountain bike, and I enjoyed it a great deal, but I remember an initial disappointment when I realized that it was not just a bigger BMX with gears. The geometry was all wrong for wheelies and hops and jumps and such. Back then, there were companies making Big-Girl BMX bikes, but I wasn't aware of them until much later. A 26" Redline Big-Person BMX (for us retro dorks) So, I gave up wheelies and hops and spent a lot of time on my mountain bike, but the 10-year-old in me was always a little sad about the whole thing. (Which may explain why, forty years later, I've become obsessed with klunkers, Big-Being BMX bikes, dirt-jump bikes, and ...

Let's start with the boat. [Yes, I know - it does not have wheels, but this is some seriously retro-cool low-carbon transport. Also, it does have pedals AND you can get it as a pedelec! So it belongs on 2Wheels Maybe - right?] Generally, 2Wheels is not a place for those of you looking to spend the big bucks on green transport, but we make exceptions when we run across something extraordinarily cool. You may remember the Budnitz titanium electric bike or the Morgan EV3 .   Well, another one popped up this week - the Beau Laker Pedal Boat.   The TreeHugger Article   Lloyd Alter over at Treehugger posted an article about this really beautiful water strider for two. Our staff is absolutely smitten! While it would not make much sense in this dust bowl, it would sure be nice to cruise around in more waterful places.   At first glance, it looks like a 1950's Chris-Craft wooden boat , but when you take a closer look you see that it's sm...

A while back (Has it really been 4 1/2 years?) Grizz and I were lucky enough to spend a little time at Electric Avenue Scooters down in Austin. It was a great visit, and I test rode a Vectrix VX-2 scooter. That visit has fueled a lot of Mesquite Hugger dreams and schemes. Since then, I have followed Electric Avenue at a distance - what a thing to make it more possible for people to pursue a petroleum free life! Recently on twitter (@EAScooters), they posted a bike that is the epitome of what I'd like to be building - a beautiful vintage cruiser with the modern e-bike convenience of a Copenhagen Wheel. Truly the best of both worlds! How cool is that? Here at 2Wheels, we drool over $3,000 e-bikes all the time, but very few of them appeal to me anywhere near as much this sweet machine! Along the same lines but even more attainable, they posted a similar bike just before the Roadmaster: This one features the Huffy Panama Jack (Yep, it's the same frame as...

I love it when a project comes together! Nope, I can't quite say it's finished, but I can say that it's ride-able. And that's a big pedal in the right direction. Hub motors - aren't they sexy? The most recent progress came in determining that the geared motor I had planned for the bike has a problem. So I swapped it out with the direct-drive motor from another project and now it runs! The (Harbor-Freight/Dollar-Tree sourced) DIY PAS sensor (none too pretty, none too functional) What's left? My home-made PAS magnet sensor is not doing the trick - pedal assist is really important to me - so I have to fix that. I need to find a better home for the battery (that blue thing on the back in the first pic. I am leaning toward the $16 frame bag that Micah recommends . I had been thinking of a box on the rear rack, but the frame bag would offer a lower center of gravity and free the rack up for panniers and cargo and looking less dorky. ...