Tag: bikes

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I Rode an eBike!

Disclaimer! I did ride a DIY ebike inside Bucketworks at the first BarCampMilwaukee in 2006… and haven’t ridden one since. Until now.

Matt loaned me his ebike while my Trek is in the shop and it’s been very interesting, and… a lot of fun! Honestly I would have never considered owning an ebike but now I find myself doing a lot of research and figuring out if I can get one. (I mean when I will get one.)

This post will mostly be about my experience riding Matt’s ebike for the first time. (It’s a Ride1Up LMT’D V1 from 2023, btw.)

Dana dropped me off at Matt’s house and he gave me a quick overview of the bike, and I rode two miles home. I used the pedal assist at level 1, and hit the throttle a few times. I was flying. It was wild. I got home pretty quick.

The next day I went for three rides to get a feel for things. Oh, the first thing I should note is that the heel of my left foot hit the (beefy!) kickstand a few times. I think the pedal are bit narrower than my Trek, which also has a skinny little kickstand, so it was just a matter of moving my foot a little and it hasn’t really happened since then.

Okay, first ride! I rode 5 miles, one of my normal routes (well, half of it) and it’s a heavy bike, my speed was a little under my normal pace, which should be expected. But overall riding it with no motor was doable, just a little slower. I really wanted to see what riding an ebike with just my legs powering it would be like.

After 5 miles I stopped, decided to do a second ride, switched on the Pedal Assist at level 1 and it was like WOW, this feels good. I was able to go my normal speed (my normal Trek bike speed) and a bit faster. And most importantly, pedaling was easier.

But now I have to talk about “cheating”… I was worried that riding an ebike would be cheating. As in, one of the main reasons I ride is to get exercise, and if the motor is doing the work instead of my legs, am I exercising anymore? Well, first of all there are no rules, so there’s no cheating. Second of all, it’s still exercise. In fact people have told me it might even be more exercise, because people who ride ebikes tend to ride more… more minutes and more miles.

So the thing about the motor is that it assists you. It is called Pedal Assist after all. I took hills that would have had me slowing to a crawl (climb?) with relative ease. It was still work, I still pedaled like heck, but I didn’t feel like I was completely running myself down. Which is good. Especially with my knee…

Yeah, my knee occasionally acts up. I’ve canceled rides because of it. Earlier this year I was doing physical therapy for it. It’s actually difficult for me to go up a flight of stairs, so you know… maybe an ebike with pedal assist is something that will ensure I can keep riding.

And finally after the two rides I did a third ride where this time I used the throttle, cranked up the pedal assist level, and let it rip. It was sort of too easy (cheating? LOL) if my primary goal was to get exercise, as I felt like I was letting the bike do all the work.

Okay, that was Day 1. (Day 0 was just riding home from Matt’s of course.)

I’ll have a more comprehensive look at the tests I did on the second day in another post. Stay Tuned!

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800 Miles / 24 Sick

Bike

Bike

Sometimes I make plans, and sometimes they work out. Sometimes I set goals and sometimes I attain them. And then there are the other times…

Map

Last week I did a little test ride to see how it would be biking down to Riverwest and back. See, I usually ride in the morning. Like, around 7am on most days. My idea was that while the Riverwest 24 was going on I’d bike down there at 7am, hang out, maybe do a lap or two, then head home. Solid plan. But alas…

I should also mention that I had a goal of biking 1,000 miles this year. in 2024 (the year I started trying to ride daily) I did a little over 600 miles. Things like work travel and getting sick make it difficult some months, but I did what I could.

I also did a few group rides in the last 9 months, mostly with the Scrappy Hour gang and I enjoyed the Santa Rampage ride quite a bit. So yeah, RW24…

See, I knew about the Riverwest 24 for quite a while. When I was at the museum 7 years ago I worked with people who did it. Hell, I’ve known some of the organizers and volunteers and riders for the past 20 or 30 years. But between 2013 and 2019 I spent every last weekend in July at Maker Faire Detroit racing tiny electric cars.

The funny thing is, the Power Racing Series and Riverwest 24 have a lot in common. They are both more about community and creativity than they are about racing and going fast and winning…

So I really wanted to check out RW24 this year. And then, on the Tuesday before the weekend I started to not feel well. I mean, I got sick. I had to get into work early Tues, Wed, & Thurs because of online streaming/training I was doing all day for those days. I got through it, but by Thursday night I was beat. I stayed home Friday to rest up and try to recover, and by Friday night I felt, well… sort of okay.

I went to bed Friday with the idea that if I woke up Saturday feeling good I would hit up RW24. Well, Saturday I had zero energy, and I hit the couch, and just could not move. Then it rained, and I gave up.

And then, I hit up the old Internet. I consumed the media from the event. I watched and listened to Riverwest Radio, I tried to see photos and video clips of the ride, I did what I could to experience it without being there. And I learned a lot.

A few days before the weekend a friend of mine said “If it’s your first time do a night lap and a day lap, as they are totally different vibes!” and another friend said “Psst! I could get you on a team!” and yet another said “My husband will be there riding a tandem bike on his own if you want to do a lap with him.”

Because the thing is, just like Power Racing was about camaraderie and having fun, Riverwest 24 is about community and the people. Sure, there are bikes and laps and keeping track, but that matters less.

Map

Here’s a normal ride for me. I did 10 miles today, since I haven’t ridden in a week. I just tool around Tosa, Milwaukee, and the surrounding area, typically not getting further than a few miles from my house, but I may start to change these patterns and go farther in whatever direction.

Oh, I also rode over 800 miles this year. I should be able to hit that 1,000 miles easily. I still need to fix my bike, the front fork is not great, and I have an idea to make it more silly, which is always fun.

Being sick totally sucked. I hate it. I seem to get sick about twice a year, and when I do it makes me not able to bike or do other things and I don’t like that. Not a fan.

If I have any complaint about Riverwest 24 it’s that I experienced a lot of it via Instagram stories and Facebook reels, which are ephemeral. They are temporary things in a walled garden, which are lost to time. I guess life is like that sometimes, and hey, there’s always next year, they say.

So I will plan for next year, I will be there, barring any unforeseen circumstances of course.

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Scrappy Hour Ride – June 2025

It’s been a while since I did the Scrappy Hour Bike Ride… February!? Yeah, I missed March due to knee pain, April due to work travel, and May due to fun travel.

So Matt messaged me about it last week and I had completely forgot! I was also not happy with the heat, but I was in. Let’s do it!

I did invite three other riders, none of whom could make it, but all asked for a reminder next time.

So from Tosa it was me, Matt, and Brian, who is one of the organizers of Scrappy Hour… Cool!

Brian is a lot of fun to ride with… we got going and a few blocks in he waved to some women on the sidewalk. I wondered if he knew them, but he sort of chuckled.

And this continued… He waved to kids, adults, and whoever else was out and about. It was actually pretty cool. I tend to be head-down when I ride on my own but seeing him wave to everyone was neat.

This time we rode to the steps behind the Marcus Performing Arts Center. We ride to a different location each month. For us riding from Tosa that usually means downhill there and uphill back. I’m getting better at uphill though…

I once again had the Kids Camera Instant Print (get your own!) and shot some photos, which you see here!

Matt told me a lot about his riding and how to properly do stats by looking at watts generated instead of just miles and hours (which I do now). Maybe I’ll try to measure watts for 2026.

Did I mention it was hot? It was way too hot. I’ve learned that one water bottle is not enough for a hot day.

I still think I’m the oldest person on these rides… I’m guessing I’m twice the age of some of the riders, but it’s all cool… we all ride bikes!

Maybe we’ll see you time! The Scrappy Hour ride is the last Sunday of the month. Right now if you want to find out about rides check out Scrappy Hour MKE on Instagram. There is also mailing list. (Email scrappyhourmke@gmail.com to get added!)

Note: This post contains an Affiliate Link. Read More.

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milesBiked – A Bar Graph Generator

In a previous post titled Miles Biked (so far)… I talked about generating bar graphs to show how many miles I biked. And in the post before that I suggested you Share Your Code. So this post is the logical conclusion.

You can find milesBiked on Codeberg, a community-led platform that offers Git hosting and other services for free and open source projects. Codeberg is a non-profit organization based in Berlin, Germany, that respects privacy, supports the commons and celebrates creativity.

When I posted about blogNag – A Blog Post Reminder I decided I should try to do more to share the code I write. It’s not amazing, it’s not worthy of praise, but it’s code that works for me, solves a problem, and others might be able to use it to learn from. In the age of AI, LLMs, and “vibe coding” I think this is important.

In a world where so many applications are subscription-based, or the free version has limitation that can only be unlocked by paying, releasing free software and open source software to the world can be seen as an act of resistance… or rebellion, even.

Code given freely is a gift to the world. I expect no remuneration for the code I share. Save it for larger projects with more impact. I donate to a number of larger software projects that I use all the time. Inkscape, OpenSCAD, CryptPad, and others… Tools I use almost daily that have allowed me to escape restrictive commercial software. Send your money where it will help the most.

Right, so I learned a bit about Matplotlib and used my basic Python skills to write about 25 lines of code… but I stand on the shoulders of giants. Those who created Python, who documented it, the Matplotlib authors, and the people who wrote articles, blog posts, forum posts, and tutorials with example code that made it all very easy for me.

Good software isn’t created in a void… and it’s not created by telling a machine what you want your code to do. It’s created by people like you. Let’s all work together to make a better world.

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Miles Biked (so far)…

I managed to bike over 500 miles in 2024 and I wrote a post about it. In that post I used screen shots from RunGap which is a great mobile app that imports data from the Apple Fitness stats captured by my watch and phone.

I don’t love the screen shot thing so I figured I should work on some code to make my own bar graphs. I used Matplotlib for Python to do the heavy lifting here. Matplotlib is complex and powerful so I really just started by ducking for python bar graph and found a few pages with examples and started there.

Also, I can’t decide if this post is about Bikes or Python, so it will be both.

After riding 600 miles in 2024 and seeing that I barely rode in four of those months (due to weather, travel, being sick, etc) I set a goal of 1,000 miles for 2025. This works out to about 84 miles each month, or just under 3 miles per day. I figured I could ride 5 miles most days, and double that on a weekend day. So even if I just rode weekends and got about 20 miles per weekend I’d be most of the way there.

I should mention that years ago I would have never imagined trying to bike 1,000 miles in a year. But I guess it’s not too different from walking. I think I did just a few rides in 2024 that were over 10 miles but that’s a regular thing for me now on weekend days.

Here’s my progress for 2025 so far – 569.58 miles. You’ll see April was a bit lower, which was due to work travel. I did also travel in May but I worked overtime to make up for it before and after my trip. I don’t have any other travel planned for this year, and hopefully I can avoid injuries and sickness. I should easily hit 600 before the end of the month, which is the halfway point for the year so… on track!

There’s a lot more data in RunGap, and I can access it via the SQLite database the app uses, so I may try to pull data directly from that, and maybe add in some graphs for other things, like hours biked, etc. And yes, many of the miles during the colder (or rainy) months were indoors on the trainer (Dana’s bike!) but I definitely prefer to get outside and ride when I can.

So here’s to more miles on the bike and more lines of code to create graphs!