Hello from Los Angeles (Northridge)!

[ULEWZ]

The wife and I have been riding mountain bikes for 2 years now and just bought our first two E-bikes, Giant Stance E+2. I look forward to reading about E-bike goings on without the usual hating rhetoric.

 

[levity]

Welcome aboard, Lew! You can now change your handle to UWIN!

You might add your location to the EMTB Members Map:
EMTB Members Map - Google My Maps

Looking forward to seeing the ride report you mentioned on the SoCal board.

 

[ULEWZ]

Welcome aboard, Lew! You can now change your handle to UWIN!

You might add your location to the EMTB Members Map:
EMTB Members Map - Google My Maps

Looking forward to seeing the ride report you mentioned on the SoCal board.

Thanks, map updated. I will add my story below:

 

[ULEWZ]

Here is the story I got chastised for posting in a So. Cal Mountain bike forum:

My E-bike experience. As many of you have surmised, I test rode an E-bike and liked it. The wife liked it also which is unusual given her propensity to error on the side of frugalness. On a whim, we went to a great shop in Santa Clarita called Open Trails Ebikes. We talked to Nick (great guy) who graciously offered to take us out any time on a test ride, so I said, what are you doing now? He said nothing, where do you like to ride? I said Tapia was our favorite place, and he said, ours too, so he loaded up three Haibikes and off we went. Gave me the uprated bike (150mm suspension) and my wife, the lesser suspension bike (130mm, bad choice). He thought she would just be along for the ride, so no use in showing her an uprated bike. Nick was great and we followed him up the trail laughing and talking all the way. He commented that we shift appropriately and handled the trail nicely. Who does he normally test ride with? Must be my grey/white hair that through him off. We got back to the shop and talked about the bikes. My wife and I both commented that the Haibikes had terrible suspension and would probably not be our first choice. I also like the look of bikes with integrated batteries, not the roach sack addon look of the Haibikes. He only had Bull Ebikes that filled the bill, but they were not in stock and were significantly more coinage. So I tipped him (thought that was the least I could do) and went home to do some research. We loved the shop and the salesman, but they just did not have the right product for us. We love our Intense Tracers, so we researched the Intense Tazers first. Ugggglllly, only limited orders, and expensive, pass. Next I looked at the Specialized bikes. Great looking, great parts, but really expensive. So, what else is there? I saw that trek had a nice bike called a Powerfly, and found a dealer in the valley that had them in stock, so off we went. Nice bikes, but I did not care for the attitude of the Teller lookalike (from Penn and Teller fame) salesman, plus no deals for two bikes, so off we went after a brief test ride in the parking lot. I remembered there was another bicycle store just 3 miles down the block called Wheel World, so off we went. Holy cow, tons of Ebikes and look at those pretty blue and orange ones. A nice guy named Taylor came over and showed us the different bikes. He had Specialized bikes on sale, but still a little pricy. He had Haibikes, but we already made our minds up about those with the 34mm forks!! My wife took a liking to the Giant bikes, so we took them for an extended test ride on the streets. We rode the Trance E+1 Pro bikes (orange color) and liked them. Then we saw the Trance E+2 bikes (blue color) and asked what the difference was? Basically, it was Shimano 1x11 vs SRAM 1x12 gears, and Shimano XT 4 pot brakes with 203mm rotors, vs SRAM Code R 4 pot brakes with 200mm rotors. Humm, the one with SRAM stuff was $700 dollars more, and not much better IMO, so the blue bikes with Shimano it was.
So, how do we like these bikes, I will give a quick comparison with our Tracers: On the tracers, we would go to Castaic and climb up Charlies, and on a good day, could make it to the fence without stopping for a rest. On a bad day, maybe two stops up the hill. After one run we were spent, maybe for the rest of the weekend! On the Trances, we would climb up to the fence and keep going on up to the towers without resting. You may be asking if we used maximum boost all the way. Well, the answer is a definite NO. These bikes have 5 levels of boost, and we mostly just use Eco mode, or 1 level of boost. Occasionally 2 while climbing on a bad day, but mostly on 1. Well you’re probably thinking we probably don’t even break a sweat. Not true, we try to maintain our cardio to stay in shape and sweat like normal, just not with our hearts trying to pound out of our chests. On the downhills, these bikes rock. With the fat tires, and 36mm forks, they go over stuff like they are nothing, and really grip in the silt/sand. The biggest advantage is my wife is not crashing anymore, which was mostly due to exhaustion. At the bottom of Tapia, it is a given we will be climbing back up to the towers and making a second run, something we only did once on the tracers. We haven’t done three runs yet, but are starting to think about it. We still ride the exercise bikes 2 to 3 times during the week, and I climb/descend 5 flights of stairs every weekday at work to stay in shape, but never seemed to get our cardio up to the level of my son, or some of the other younger riders. Is an Ebike for everyone, most certainly not, but fun for us and we have no regrets. For the “E” curious, give one a test ride and report back. For those with no interest, thanks for reading.