Trail of the Coeur d’Alene

trail of the hiawatha ebike — *My dad ticking off (rainy) miles on the Trail of the Hiawatha on his Rad Rover ebike.*

EBIKES. Some people love them, while others beseech the pope to label them the 8th deadly sin.

I’m a cycling enthusiast (some might slight addict) and don’t personally ride an ebike. However, many people around me do, and I think ebike maligners are missing the potential of electric bicycles.

There’s a place for them, as well as justifiable restrictions. The aim of this post is to add to the developing discussion about their use.

First, three prime uses where ebikes shine.

1. Folks who can’t ride a normal bike for whatever reason (e.g. injury or medical condition)

My dad, who is a hale and hearty 77 years old, underwent knee replacement surgery a few years ago. Even with the repair, he couldn’t rally his old-school mountain bike on the gravel roads of N. Idaho like before.

Ebikes to the rescue. For his birthday last year, I surprised him with a Rad Rover ebike. From barely riding, suddenly he’s pedaling longer miles than before. That’s more hours on the bike leading to better health. Zero issues

For a test, we took his Rad Rover to ride the Trail of the Coeur’d Alene for a few days. He proceeded to smash my quads into submission. We watched moose browse trailside, birds flocked nearby, and we enjoyed excellent outdoor time…all because my dad could ride his ebike and wasn’t relegated to a sedentary lifestyle by an injury.

*My dad cruising the Trail of the Couer d’Alene. I’ll convince him to wear a helmet…ohh probably never.*

Rather than a knee injury, what about someone with a heart condition who loooves biking, but can no longer do it? Convince me that isn’t a positive use for an ebike, even on a mountain bike trail?

2. Bike commuting versus slowly expiring in a vehicle

So many examples here. My brother, for one. He has kids and a full-time job with a 10-mile commute. He could sit in the car for 40+ minutes each day OR hammer on his Magnum Metro ebike for an hour, most of it on a dedicated bike path. One polluting car removed from traffic, one happy dude getting exercise and clearing his head at the same time.

My friend John used to sit in his car for 1.5 hours a day, grinding his way through Portland’s rush hour traffic. With an ebike, he charges over the steep west hills of PDX and gets a great workout, all in the SAME TIME that he used to drive. (He used the Bafang ebike conversion kit on an old mountain bike.)

Complete no-brainer. I’m (almost) sad to work from home and miss out on ebike commuting.

3. Ebikes level the playing field so riders of different strengths can ride together

Consider this: what if your group ride didn’t need to regroup or wait for slower riders? Everyone rides as hard as they want and still stays together.

Pure roadies will hate this, but let them “enjoy” their elitist Hammer Death Rides. The rest of us shall have more fun!

My close-to-home example: my wife Chelsea. She loves to ride and has pedaled loaded touring bikes across the U.S. and through 15 European countries. However, she’s a slower rider than I am, which (thanks to my VERY occasional inability to be mature and patient) creates stress. No one likes to slow other people down, myself included.

Enter the Trek Allant + ebike. Now I hammer away like the maniac I am and she stays right with me. I doubt it’s a positive, but she can also truly see my intensity on a bike. (Good thing she can’t see me mountain bike downhill…)

From thousands of feet of climbing on mega-scenic McKenzie Pass, churning up dirt on forest service roads, or pedaling around town, Chelsea is loving her new bike. The idea of bike touring from hotel to hotel (gotta have charging stations) with her on an ebike sounds delightful. And not only because I want her to carry all the heavy stuff…

Additional Ebike Uses

Ebikes as grocery and kid haulers around town, and also for spinning to work or a restaurant without arriving sweaty and tired. Numerous friends charge around with toddlers in tow and bags of food attached to the bike. The more people who ride, the more money flowing to bike infrastructure, which can help lower traffic congestion. And emissions, of course.
Ebikes as a range extender during van trips. Even for me, lover of long mtb rides, this holds promise. Sayyyy huge days in the Downieville mountains like this Santa Cruz Heckler video? I lack stank in the legs to ride ALL of a destination’s trails on a road trip. Which is ok…but what if my horizon expands to 2x the daily riding without annihilating myself? Intriguing for sure.
Another mtb application: ditching the shuttle vehicles that churn up and down fire roads near mountain bike trails. What if those gas-guzzling trucks were replaced by the low whine of a peloton of emtbs cranking uphill? Yes!
My friend’s Pam and Bob carry slim Specialized ebikes on the back of their Sprinter van, which allows them to cruise around towns they visit during their travels.

Potential applications go on and on…

For recreation, ebikes are already priced similarly enough to non-motorized bikes. Components and weight don’t matter as much when you’ve got a motor, after all.

For practical applications, the ebike prices are low enough that ditching a car and replacing it with an ebike is a smart investment for many families. A UPS driver told me that he was delivering 8 per day (!) to a nearby hilly neighborhood. That’s momentum.

A Few Caveats

Positivity aside, I don’t support free reign for ebikes. While I’m for electric vehicles in general (motorcycles, cars, trucks, whatever), seeing speeding ebikes or emotorcycles on bike paths or trails isn’t ideal.

Some ebikes are essentially small dirt bikes masquerading as pedal-assist ebikes, which makes for a) dangerous encounters on mountain bike trails and b) potentially shredded trails. Pedal-assist bikes with no throttle, plus speed caps (like Class 1 and Class 3 ebikes) and enforceable penalties are one way to go. Expect to see tons of contentious discussion in the coming years.

*Railroad trestle crossing on the Trail of the Couer d’Alene.*

There must be a way to make it work! I’m a fan of getting more people off their asses and enjoying the outdoors, motorized assist or not. Yep, even if it means more crowded spaces.

A few checks in the cons column doesn’t dissuade me from thinking ebikes are positive overall. I also understand why people fear opening legislation – suddenly seeing beautiful natural spaces overrun with dirtbikes is not my idea of success in this arena!

Regardless, ebikes are here to stay. Growth is incredible right now (almost 100% in spring 2020) and the bikes keep getting sleeker and lighter with more range. To handle that, we need productive, nuanced discussion, not pitched battles of NO EBIKES vs EBIKES EVERYWHERE.

To all you ebike owners, a simple ask: if you see me sweating up a climb, don’t blow by and smash my ego. Slow down to a conversational pace and say hi to the Bike Luddite.

Then pedal away with a breeze in your hair and a smile on your face while I contemplate why I don’t own an ebike.

*Carrying my bike uphill in Graegle, CA. A good potential day for an ebike…*

A nice 20 mile back road section (Blue Slide Road) from Thompson Falls to Noxon. Avoid highway 200 and take this!

Ten days of cycling now lay behind us, efforts etched into the muscles in our legs along with the sights and smells from the route we’ve traversed. I am stunned to discover a patient side within myself, and also an inner facet content to spin along at 12 miles per hour watching rivers flow by while stopping to chat with people at their mailboxes. Everyone, without a hitch, is so nice, and many people are inspired by our trip and tell us of their goals to backpack long distance or bike tour. Some, not so much. As one woman put it: “You do that. I’m gonna go have a beer.” Touche, madame.

Life feels simple right now. Our goal for each day is simply to ride our bikes as far as we desire, or until one of us hits the wall. (So far, we’ve dodged the latter, so we haven’t slept next to a highway in a culvert. Yet.) Perhaps the best part is that there are no expectations from anyone and no timeline. We’ll get there when we do!

Exploring a gravel road near the Idaho-Montana border.

Strangely, I feel even more free than I did road tripping in the van. I think it’s because our day is outlined for us by the most basic of survival instincts: find sufficient food, water and shelter to support our cross-country trek. (And the last one is easy with the tent strapped to my bike.) We hang food out of an inquisitive bear’s reach, cook dinner on a propane stove and read as the sun sets. Or we indulge our fancy-pants side and get a hotel (I’m not above that!), check in on work, go out to eat, snag some groceries and prep for our next off-grid section of the ride. I view hotels as a nice side benefit of working while traveling – no guilt. We’re mixing it up beyond that and have also couch surfed once and camped in a backyard here in Whitefish via the wonderful bicycle hospitality site Warm Showers. No no, not Golden Showers, you perv.

An absolutely picturesque scene just west of Glacier.

Our route so far has exceeded expectations and been muy fabuloso. Rolling out the driveway at Chelsea’s parents’, we started in the rolling lentil and wheat hills in Idaho and SE Washington, soon supplanted by forested slopes of mountains and rivers feeding into Coeur d’Alene Lake, a jewel in Northern Idaho. We cruised that on the Trail of the Coeur d’Alene, the amazing rails-to-trails paved path spanning the width of the panhandle up north in Idaho. (Yay for railroads and mining companies paying out of the “kindness of their heart’s” to clean up a Super Fund site!) From there, we meandered and camped by rivers on quiet back roads and then up Thompson Pass, crossing into Montana after a hard day’s ride in 95 degree heat. Another five days of riding along rivers and lakes through sparkling green valleys and between mountain ranges and we were within a few miles of the Canadian border. Then a long 64-mile day to cap our first stint down into Whitefish, gateway to Glacier National Park. The last should have been 58 but *cough* someone (me) *cough* missed a turn. 420 miles of riding for our “warm-up” and a deserved rest day! (Don’t worry, I won’t do a point-by-point like this in the future…)

A blazing sunset over Couer d'Alene Lake from our room at the Lakeview Lodge where we sat and drank local huckleberry wine.

(Click to open for full effect.) A blazing sunset over Couer d’Alene Lake from our room at the Lakeview Lodge where we sat and drank local huckleberry wine.

I’m impressed with my body’s ability to handle hauling 100+ pounds of bike, gear, food and water. I’m REALLY impressed with Chelsea kicking butt and taking names with so much riding on a loaded bike! Initially, she was wondering how far she could go each day carrying so much weight. She’s a champ and is absolutely crushing it, with days like 56 miles and 5,500’ of elevation or our 64 miles yesterday and a couple others over 50 miles already. The Plains better watch out, here we come! I’m sure the headwinds there are cowering as I write this… As for our relationship (thanks for asking), we are doing oh-so-well. Surprisingly, perhaps, since I am an impatient jerk at times. Somehow, I’ve found my Zen space with touring and so we are having a marvelous time.

Silent back roads of eastern Washington.

Our biggest concern, other than whether our legs would fall off from overuse, was where (or if) we’d find healthy plant-based food. We’ve dodged that bullet by foraging for edible berries and scraping the soft layer of bark from tree branches and hey, we’re both feeling great other than this weird tummy bug. Juuust kidding. Actually, even in tiny towns with just a tavern and a handful of residents, this has luckily not been an issue. For those of you out there who are vegetarian or vegan and planning to do a long tour, perhaps this is something you’re wondering about? Do not fear, it’s doable! I’ll continue to update and probably write an entire post on surviving small-town America without a co-op, Café Gratitude or Whole Foods from which to forage.

This is feeling far more like a sabbatical than the prior eight months. Work, while still something I briefly check in on almost daily, seems distant. I feel mellow and obligations aren’t pulling at me, a very nice change of pace. Perhaps five hours of pedaling a bicycle requires so much energy that I simply focus on the necessary aspects of life? No boredom yet either – between podcasts, audiobooks and reading on my phone’s Kindle app, I’m consuming content voraciously, and have already read close to 1,800 pages so far, including the huge biography about John D. Rockefeller. Best time to read? At the top of long, steep climbs if I happen to arrive before Chelsea.

Soft light on a curve in the rolling hills of the Palouse.

Narg, the angry monster of my hungry alter-ego, is defanged by constantly eating. Nuts, fruit, granola bars and fig newtons all disappear down my gullet. My good friend Evan said one time, “I just realized something: you never stop eating!” That is even more true now that we’re riding our bikes with a heavy load with heart rates in the fat burning zone. I’m eating a lot, but so far it isn’t ridiculous. Unless you count eating an entire 12” pizza by myself ridiculous, of course. Hoping to graduate to a 15” pizza soon!

The Wild Coyote Saloon in Montana. Solid food and nice cold refills for our water bottles. (C photo)

I know you’re itching for a story of misery, about how this is SO hard and trying. Other than a gunshot-loud tire blowout two miles from the start and a missing screw on Chelsea’s pedal cleat, I’m happy to report that the weather has been perfect, if hot, and life is good. Don’t worry, we have miles and miles to go, so I’m sure stories will surface. My karma isn’t that good. At the moment, however, I’m sitting on our hosts’ back porch (thanks Rita and Chuck!) with a view of the glowing mountains at 10 pm while drinking ice tea. We are primed and ready for our assault on the Crush-the-Quads sojourn up the steep and long Going-to-the-Sun Road through Glacier. As Jack Kerouac poetically put it, “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”

Pedal on,

Dakota

P.S. More photos below! Check ’em out.

Testing out gear just prior to our departure.

Our route for Days 1-10, just in case you’re curious.

Testing out video – this is from Lake Koocanusa headed north in Montana toward Canada. You may need to click through to YouTube to watch it.

Scenes like this are just everywhere in the NW. Such a great place to ride! This is a couple hours worth of riding west of Glacier.

As if biking isn't hard enough... (C photo)

As if biking isn’t hard enough…a super fun climb into the bathroom on the Trail of the CDA. Totally staged, for the record. (C photo)

Cooled off after a long day in the chilly Clark Fork River and then enjoyed a great night’s rest.

Lunch break at the top of steep (11% grade) Thompson Pass heading into Montana. See the road down to the right?

Flowers are still firing up in the high mountains!

Years ago, some miner was bored in the winter up in Murray, ID and decided to dig a hole in the floor of his bedroom to mine for gold. He actually found some! (Or some variation of that.) Now, they just have delicious food.

Crossing a half-mile trestle on the Trail of the Couer d’Alene. Camera malfunction killed the next day’s shots, including the best ones with big moose and baby on the trail. 🙁