Three Bears Ride 8/2/2015

I'm planning a leisurely ebike ride around the Three Bears loop near Orinda, CA for Sunday August 2nd. It is about 20 miles around the loop plus a few more going to lunch, which is near Orinda BART.

The loop is so named for the three hills we will climb.

Here's the Draft Plan, subject to revision (this first posting will be updated as it changes).

We will gather at about 10AM at the corner of San Pablo Dam road and Bear Creek road. Wildcat Canyon road also joins at this junction. There is limited parking in this area, some may choose to come via public transportation, the Orinda BART station is only about 3km away. We'll move out about 10:30 and take about 1.5-2 hours to do the loop, stopping at a few places. Then we'll go into Orinda and have lunch, for those what wish to, others may wish to continue on up Wildcat Canyon and into Berkeley where there is another BART station. For those continuing to lunch in Orinda, bring a cable and lock and we'll lock the bikes together near the Subway sandwich place and take turns getting our lunches so we can keep a direct watch on the machinery, and answer questions which always come up. There are other food vendors in this area as well.

This will be a comfortable easy ride (with some big hills), not a race. Taking the loop in the clockwise direction makes the uphills less steep and the downhills steeper, so make sure your brakes are in good shape. I did the course and used only modest regen, none of the hills are too steep for that, but I have pretty strong regen.

We're not expecting a large group, but a few folks might want to join us. At the moment there are about four riders planning to make the trip. The ride circles around the San Pablo and Briones reservoirs and through the rolling hills of the East Bay. It is a popular bicycle route. Many of the photos of my ebikes with water in the background are from this area.

Here is a map of the ride (not my map):

http://www.mapmyride.com/us/orinda-ca/three-bears-loop-route-17433748

There is about 1850 feet of elevation gain on this ride, but the gradients are moderate at up to 3.3%. Your ebike should have a minimum range of at about 30 miles to do this trip.

Who is interested in joining us? Let me know in advance, here or PM or email, and confirm Saturday evening if possible. Thanks!

EDIT - BART will be doing maintenance this day, affecting the trans-bay tube. Plan accordingly.

Anyone interested in joining us on this ride post here or drop me a PM or email.

I just did the loop to check out traffic and road conditions. I logged 22 miles in about 1.5 hours with the Borg and consumed 14 amp hours (66V nom). I kept the speed down, 15-20 until near the end when I kicked it up to get back home. Most ebikes will require less energy to make this trip. I did get some back on the downhills via regen.

Traffic was fairly light, both vehicle and ebike.

I took a couple of photos, one of which I added to the first posting above.

Still at 3 riders for Sunday. Any more?

Charging up my pack, put 18AH back in, 14AH from the test ride, and 4AH from some other miscellany. Just as expected. The Multistars are really working out well.

It took me 14AH (@66V) to do the 22 miles (2/3 at 15 or so), but most bikes are more efficient than the Borg due to the large low pressure moped tires. We should keep the speed down and pedal a bit and enjoy the scenery, that will save quite a bit over the normal high speed rush of commuter ebiking.

We are up to as many as 6 ebikes at this point, some of those are still tenative.

Rider count is up to 4-6 for the ride and lunch this Sunday. See the first post for the info and let me know if you are going to join us.

Today I was working on the auxiliary battery for the Borg. I won't need it for this trip, but there are times where it will be useful. This is three of the Zippy 6S 8000mAH batteries in the Topeak trunk. Later I will change to three of the 8AH MultiStars for a reduction in volume and weight. This parallels with the 32AH main pack on the Borg and provides 40AH of 67V for about 2.66 kWH. This should be enough to do this ride 2.8 times based on the recent test. But it does raise the trunk weight to 16 pounds, and the seatpost rack is rated for 20 pounds. I've used it before but the cantilevered weight concerns me. I will look into a support for the rack, which is tricky due to the rear suspension. I'll also put some protection over the pack before loading any more in the trunk.

Nothing on my calander for that sunday, give me a pencil check. Pm sent with some contact info.

adamcooks said:

Nothing on my calander for that sunday, give me a pencil check. Pm sent with some contact info.

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Excellent.

Aw, I was planning on taking the Bart over. I guess that leaves me with the Oakland ferry, which means I'll have to leave mighty early, and I'll be mighty hungry by lunch time. Last time on the return I biked all the way back to Oakland through Tilden park. I'd like to do that again this time, if anyone wants to join. Maybe we could even stop at the miniature railway.

Glad you can still make it. Sorry about the BART thing, I don't normally use it so didn't notice the date conflict until recently. Changing the date now would be difficult.

Just made a rack stiffener for my Borg, so carrying more battery is more confident than before with just a seatpost cantilever mount. But going to Oakland doesn't work for me. Maybe some of the other riders are interested in that route.

Almost forgot to recharge the headlight battery. We won't be needing that, however, for tomorrow's ride.

I'd appreciate it if everyone confirmed their plans for tomorrow so we'd know who's going to be there.

PM or email is fine.

Thanks,

I'm still coming, Jeff is not due to transbay Bart not running.

quuxman said:

I'm still coming, Jeff is not due to transbay Bart not running.

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Understood. Thanks for the confirmation.

Good morning. See you at the intersection of Bear Creek road and San Pablo Dam road around 10am.

Resting at San Pablo Reservoir Overlook

We met - Abram, Erik, Adam and Alan; and made the 20+ mile loop this morning. Several others were planning to come but for various reasons were unable to.

The weather was beautiful and temperate. We met up, reviewed each other's rigs, did the loop and then proceeded to Orinda for a nice lunch. Adam had to hurry off (hope the sick kid is okay). The rest of us enjoyed the breeze and chatted for awhile. Erik directed his wife to pick him up there, and Abram and I headed off back toward Wildcat Canyon. Erik went on up into the canyon and over into Berkeley, while I steamed on by the lake again and cruised home. My Cycle Analyst says 37.3 miles and 21.0 amp hours. This is two 7 mile commutes to get to and return from the ride, plus the ride. The commute to the ride was a about 4 amp hours and 7 miles, the commute home was also 7 miles but considerably more amp hours due to the wind. Some of that wind was natural, and some was induced by the bike's forward speed.

At the lunch stop after the main part of the ride my CA said about 14 amp hours, the last part of the trip chewed up quit a bit.

In terms of mechanical problems, we had very few. Adam had a damaged spot in his front tire spotted about 2/3 through the trip, so he held the speed down on the downhills, and there were some minor scraping brakes on Erik's, and his CA seemed to be out of calibration between the shunt and the battery pack usage and the speedo pickup doesn't work due to the large space to the fork so the various CA data doesn't work well.

Thanks for a nice trip all, and see you next time.

Yes indeed, great trip. Thanks for organizing Alan. After lunch I continued on over the ridge through Tilden park into Berkeley, rode to Oakland, took the ferry to SF, then meandered some more. This totaled 58 miles for the day and -8 amp hours, which means I probably did about half pedalling maybe less.

It's really nice to meet and see again other ebikers. I'd like to do do more rides, maybe in Marin.

Would be good to do another ride soon. Marin would be good.

I'd like to do slackers hill again after I get the front motor working on the mountain bike, but that will take a little while. The Borg is ready for trips and the BikeE would not be too hard to get ready for one as well.

What a great ride it was. Took the tire to my local bike shop in Benicia, getting a replacement under warranty. After only 75ish miles the bead had just separated from the tire.

Looking forward to the next ride, I think I will bring the trailer and little one. Thanks again for organizing this Alan, it was a pleasure to meet you all.

Great photo Adam, hope the little one is feeling better.

Good to have new folks come along.