#19: I have a minivan and it is called a RadWagon

I am deeply in love with my ebike.

This week’s newsletter is the result of two things: 1) a friend asked me to write about my sweet #dadbike and 2) I am on day 3 of a 3 day juice cleanse. If you know me, you know there’s no way in hell I would get involved in something like this on my own. My wife was doing it and I thought, why not purge the toxins from my body and reload them with other toxins from the sugar laced juice I’m drinking? WHY NOT! So if my writing is squishier than usual, blame it on the aloe vera juice I’m drinking.

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There’s this great scene in season 2 of Ted Lasso where Dr. Fieldstone, the sports psychologist who works with the Richmond football team, talks about her love of biking. She says:

Riding a bike is my happy place. It’s where I feel in control.

This short, simple little line really resonated with me. When I saw it, I had been doing most of my commuting via bike for about a month. I was like “YES! That’s it. Joy + Control” is why I loved my bike. But deciding to embrace hauling my kids all over the place on two wheels and a tiny motor took some time.

When we moved into our house in a northeastern suburb of Seattle called Bothell, two things happened to me. First, 99% of what I would need to access is about 1 mile from our front door. The elementary school our kids would go to is about 1/2 mile a way, the daycare that bleeds us dry every month is about 1 mile into downtown, my favorite beer store is 1.2 miles also in downtown, and a shitty grocery store that I visit when I’m not feeling bougie enough to shop at an upscale market is less than a mile away too. Even though it was the suburbs, I kinda sorta lived in a 15 minute city and really loved it.

The second thing that I noticed is that Bothell is legit hilly. Like homies training for the Tour de France could roll their cool fancy bikes around here to get their feel for handling the Pyrenees (ok not really). It’s about a 220’ elevation drop in about 1 mile from my house to our downtown. I tried riding a regular bike over the 1 mile commute and by myself it was fine. Not enjoyable. But fine. But the few times I tried hauling the girls around in our little trailer, I felt like I was pulling the bike through quicksand. At the time, I had never really considered an ebike so I gave up on the idea of commuting in my tiny little suburb with anything other than a car (or the occasional walk).

Zion changed me (in multiple ways)

My attitude towards ebikes changed in our trip to Zion National Park. Zion isn’t like most National Parks I’ve been to. You can’t just drive in, fumble around on a scenic drive, and park at the hike you want to do. It don’t work that way. You can drive in but parking is limited to the visitors center and spots are super scarce (like driving in circles for an hour eyeing people like hawks hoping they’re getting into their cars rather than out of their cars). Instead, Zion has a shuttle system. Which would be great and all if you could just hop on, hop off like you were on one of them touristy double decker red buses in London. But that won’t fly either. You have to reserve your ticket(s) on a website (recreation.gov). The tickets are released every day at 5pm for the following day (I think you can reserve tickets in advance too but don’t quote me on that). BUT! The tickets go faster than the opening night to a Backstreet Boys concert in 1998.

So rather than say our prayers to the shuttle lords and hope we could get a spot, we rented ebikes instead. And it was a game changer. We rode 9 miles one way with the girls in a trailer in the back down to the Narrows, the most famous hike at Zion. We played in the water, ate some lunch, then rode back another 9 miles. All in, we did about 22 miles on the bikes. We were able to hop on, hop off wherever we wanted. We didn’t need to look for parking or worry about the shuttle schedule. We were in complete control and moving at a pace that allowed us to really take in how freakin amazing the park is.

Our kids are in there somewhere?

At the end of that day, I resolved myself to getting an ebike when we got back to Bothell.

School drop off sucks super hard

A few months after returning home, I still had not bought my ebike. I was waffling on the idea. I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted or how much I wanted to spend. The catalyst for me to get an ebike was the realization that I would be dropping off (and picking up) 2 kids from 2 different schools. We live too close to our elementary school for bus pickup so we would need to either walk it or drive it. The thought of pulling into the daycare parking deck, jockeying with all the assholes who drive teslas, and then scraping the side of my car on the parking garage pillar like I was opening a can of tuna with a steak knife AND THEN driving another mile to wait in a carpool line with all the other parents had me in hives. This was gonna suck.

Unless! Unless I did it on a bike! No need to wade into the parking deck. Just pull right up to the front door. No carpool line. Bypass all that shit and go straight to the bike parking (which literally no one but me uses). Yes, this was gonna be the plan!

“Oh hey I bought a $3,000 bike”

I do not rashly spend money. I mean, I will bet my buddies $20 on a game or spend $75 on a nice bottle of bourbon. But I don’t just go off and spend more than a few hundred dollars without consulting Megan.

Until I bought this bike.

I had done my research and decided I wanted a RadWagon from Rad Power Bikes based in Ballard, WA (about 40 minutes from us). So I knew what I wanted. The website said they were sold out and on backorder for 3 months. I wanted to test drive it before buying anyway, so I drove down to Ballard to give it a spin. I immediately loved it. The bike is bulky (weighing about 100lbs not loaded) but you could tell that it was designed to haul things. Groceries. Kids. Cases of beer (the childseat can hold an 18 pack of Coors Light. Don’t ask me how I know). I wasn’t looking for a sport bike or a mountain bike or a cruiser. I was looking for a goddamn minivan on two wheels. And I had found it.

When I returned from my test drive the sales rep mentioned that they had 1 RadWagon left in the back. I thought about it for about 15 seconds and bought it. I loaded the bike up with a variety of gear (more below on the full build out) and when it was all said and done, the bike cost just a shade under $3,000. I just spent HOW MUCH ON A BIKE?

As soon as I got it home I knew I was in love. I could haul the girls all around our little town in this thing. The range fully charged carrying a full load (the capacity is 350 lbs) is about 20-25 miles. I think if we lived in a flat area, we’d get closer to 40 miles but not in our hilly ass town.

Commuting is so “Rad” on this thing

(I’m not a Rad Power Bikes sales rep but I should be)

What I had not planned when I bought the bike is how much the girls absolutely LOVE riding in the thing. I knew I would enjoy it. Riding bikes is peaceful and calming and all the things we remember as kids. But my girls ask to go on rides (I’m pretty sure they think it’s a roller coaster). We take it to school, to the grocery store, and on Sunday afternoon bike rides to neighboring towns. We’re lucky enough to live near the Burke Gilman trail, a trail that runs about 20+ miles from Seattle out to Lake Sammamish east of the city. This means we can take the protected bike lanes Bothell affords us down to the trail and then ride about 10-15 miles in either direction, all without having to battle cars or red lights. It’s fantastic.

We’ve found that the bike is really awesome to ride when it’s above 40 degrees and not raining (misting or drizzle is fine). Anything below 40 degrees, or when it’s raining, is a little too miserable a ride to handle. Our 5 year old did complain a bit about the wind in her eyes when we’re heading down hill (we hit about 30 MPH) so I got her some ski goggles to wear. Besides looking cool as hell, they keep her eyes from drying out during the rides.

I do get exercise riding the ebike!

Ok, so something I hear a lot from folks is “oh, you don’t get any exercise on an ebike”. Not true! Is it as rigorous as riding a regular bike or jogging? Of course not. But the thing with a RadWagon is you can make it as rigorous as you want to. The bike has a throttle which works with or without pedaling. You could use the throttle full time if you wanted to and not pedal at all. But what’s the fun in that? I typically only use the throttle for starting from a full stop (you really do need it with a full load). Once the bike is going, I use the pedal assist which is ranges from 0 (no assist) to 5 (lots of assist). 0 is perfect for flat road while you need 5 to haul some little kids up a big ass hill. What I’ve found is on an average ride I can keep my heart rate at around 125-135 BPM if I consistently keep the pedal assist low.

Early on when I got the bike, I did a poor job of gauging how much juice the battery had left in it. I learned the hard way that “4 bars” on the meter meant I had a long way to go before the battery was wiped but “2 bars” meant “you better get your ass back to the house”. It’s almost like there’s an exponential decline in the battery meter that’s hard to read. In any case, hauling the big heavy bike up a hill with two kids on it is haaaaard. But it’s good exercise and way easier than trying to push a car up a hill (done that too y’all).

The full buildout

Several folks have asked what I have on the bike so here we go:

• RadWagon Cargo Bike

• Caboose - I highly recommend getting the caboose, especially if you have kids. The caboose acts almost like a guardrail keeping the kids in the bike. Our 3 year old still sits in a seat with straps b/c ain’t no body gonna trust a 3 year old. But our 5 year old sits in the caboose without a seat belt or straps

• Running boards - keeps the damn kids from jamming their grubby little feet into the chain

• Thule Yepp Maxi Childseat — “Thule Yepp Maxi” doesn’t sound like a childseat as much as it sounds like a Scandinavian pop band. But it works well and gives me a sense of safety with our 3 year old.

• Rad Mirror - I did not have one of these for the first few months or riding and I don’t know why I waited so long. When you’re sharing the road with a car, a rear view mirror is absolutely necessary.

• Front mounted basket - my only regret with the front basket is that it’s not quite large enough to hold a milk crate or some other thing that I could use to transport more stuff.

• Radio — yes, my bike has a radio. It was a Christmas gift from our 5 year old. She loves listening to Queen so I have a feeling we will be rolling down the streets of Bothell, WA blaring “We will rock you”.

I love riding this thing so damn much that I put together a dashboard of our rides (I mean, building these things is what I do for a living after all). You can see in December we didn’t ride much mostly because of snow and cold weather. But one cool thing since we started riding is we’ve ridden 362 miles which nets out to 327 fewer pounds of CO2 being emitted into the air by a car. Pretty cool, right?