MikeSSS
1 kW
We went to Albuquerque, for the Balloon Fiesta, and saw a few ebikes.
The Balloon events are at dawn and at about 6pm into the night. That leaves a lot of spare time, from about 10am to 5pm, we took pedal bikes and did some riding. Because of long, slow traffic jams to park your car, both morning and evening, it is nice to do the mid day stuff on bikes.
From the Balloon Fiesta site, there is an easy ride to a water diversion channel, the North Diversion Channel, and from there to Alameda street. Alameda street has bike paths, leading to the Rio Grande River bike paths. Both the North Diversion Channel and Rio Grande bike paths have little shade, but are nice riding. There are lots of very fast roadies on these paths, they are reluctant to call out "on your left" when passing, so be careful if you ride there.
The first bike to pass us was an ebike, it made some whine and had a rear hub motor, probably a geared hub. It also had fenders, so it appeared to be a commuter ebike, perhaps a conversion kit bike.
The other ebikes we saw were on the back of recreational vehicles. These ebikes were probably used as dinghies, for the RV's.
All the ebikes we saw had rear hub motors, most were conversion bikes, only one factory type ebike was seen.
Balloons: The Balloon Fiesta site has the famous "Albuquerque Box" air flow, the air flows at various directions at various altitudes. The box airflow gives the balloons the ability to take off, fly away, return for low passes or landing, all at the same site. On Wednesday, the box flow was working very well, some of the "shape" balloons that seldom fly, the big white and black cow for example, flew in the excellent conditions. This was at dawn or shortly after. By the 6pm launch time for the long range gas balloons, there was too much wind, so the launch of the gas balloons was postponed. The Balloon Fiesta is supposed to be the biggest balloon event, it had a very large number of balloons and even more RV's.
Ride on ...
The Balloon events are at dawn and at about 6pm into the night. That leaves a lot of spare time, from about 10am to 5pm, we took pedal bikes and did some riding. Because of long, slow traffic jams to park your car, both morning and evening, it is nice to do the mid day stuff on bikes.
From the Balloon Fiesta site, there is an easy ride to a water diversion channel, the North Diversion Channel, and from there to Alameda street. Alameda street has bike paths, leading to the Rio Grande River bike paths. Both the North Diversion Channel and Rio Grande bike paths have little shade, but are nice riding. There are lots of very fast roadies on these paths, they are reluctant to call out "on your left" when passing, so be careful if you ride there.
The first bike to pass us was an ebike, it made some whine and had a rear hub motor, probably a geared hub. It also had fenders, so it appeared to be a commuter ebike, perhaps a conversion kit bike.
The other ebikes we saw were on the back of recreational vehicles. These ebikes were probably used as dinghies, for the RV's.
All the ebikes we saw had rear hub motors, most were conversion bikes, only one factory type ebike was seen.
Balloons: The Balloon Fiesta site has the famous "Albuquerque Box" air flow, the air flows at various directions at various altitudes. The box airflow gives the balloons the ability to take off, fly away, return for low passes or landing, all at the same site. On Wednesday, the box flow was working very well, some of the "shape" balloons that seldom fly, the big white and black cow for example, flew in the excellent conditions. This was at dawn or shortly after. By the 6pm launch time for the long range gas balloons, there was too much wind, so the launch of the gas balloons was postponed. The Balloon Fiesta is supposed to be the biggest balloon event, it had a very large number of balloons and even more RV's.
Ride on ...
I was on my Montague, and I doubt he had a chance to notice it was an ebike. Too bad we didn't get a chance to BS.
