Spicy in the snow

You may think it's the act of a mad man to take a powered bicycle, let alone a long tail one, out into frozen liquid sunshine, on purpose. I actually remember saying, "Woo Hoo it's snowing, I'm gonna take the Spicy home". Well, dear non-believer, I may be stupid but I'm not an idiot. It was fresh snowfall, so no ice under it, and only an inch deep when I headed out. This is gonna be maximum commuting fun.

The Yuba Spicy Curry is not my regular ride, I have a Virtue Truck Cargo Bicycle that I have converted to electric but is off the road while I sort out why the hub motor got so noisy (it's the clutch). But I have ridden this one on and off all summer as it's one of our loaner fleet. Lucky lucky me. Pretty much the best perk of being a bike mechanic here. I had my choice of eight other eBicycles but this is my favorite by a country mile. I would totally buy one but unfortunately it's just about a country foot too long for my apartment lifestyle, even so, I still fantasize about owning one. They start at four and a half grand american, but still way cheaper than a decent secondhand car, fuel and insurance for a year and this bike could last a lifetime looked after correctly. You can't say that about a car.

This Spicy Curry with it's 36v Currie 350W Mid-drive system (latest ones are now Bosch) driving the 20" back wheel is the right amount of powerful, with bags of torque, AND its running on, factory fitted, Schwallbe Big Apple Plus SUMMER tires!!! The boy is a fool you are thinking, right? So why was it my first choice over and above lower torqued more 'normal' eBicycles in our stable? 

The long wheelbase is why. With the tires a bit on the soft side and the power on low, taking it steady a long wheelbase bicycle gives me significantly more warning and time to react than a regular length bicycle when things start to go a bit sideways, a bit screwy, a bit 'oh my giddy aunt!'. Think about it. Something like a folding bicycle on small wheels and short wheelbase is twitchy but able to make any turn under normal conditions and that's the fun of that kind of machine. However, on a slippy road when any bump of half frozen snow can dictate your direction on a second by second basis, that twitchyness makes the bicycle a total nightmare to ride. It can cause more clenching than a near miss from an F150 when you had the right of way. A long bicycle is the opposite. There's a certain amount of over-steering required anyway so if I start to loose the back end that is twice as far away from my backside than a regular bicycle, I get all the time in the world to feel it, relax and correct it, summer tires or not. Plus 2" wide rubber is a lot less influenced by bumpy half frozen snow than a narrower tire.

My 12km ride home has me rolling down average streets, I tend not to feel that pressurised by car proximity, a few speed bumps and rough old concrete roads dug up a dozen times and badly repaired. Regular Vancouver. But not so regular is the steep zig-zag through trees to get onto Second Narrows Bridge. Let play time begin. 

At this time of year I think only 6-10 people ride the bridge so I’m confident I can just power up the zig-zag climb without meeting anyone coming down. To get onto it there's a 300° left turn which I do very slowly to avoid sliding off the tarmac into brambles. Once straightened out I ease on the power towards a 300° right. Once up there I just back off pedaling a moment and straight on again to get a power dip and thereby get the back wheel to spin in the snow a little and ease my turn without loosing the front end. Basically, I did a 'skiddy' to make the turn, woohoo, love this bike it was graceful and easy to control. I ride steadily up to the next turn, a 300° left an do the same, this one is steeper so I have to turn the power up, but there's more space too, what fun. Now I’m climbing the straight on to the bridge fairly quickly now and it’s all good. Then I’m on the bridge and have reached the top... the crest... considering the snow, I'm going to call it the summit. The easy bit is over. Gravity has been my friend on the climb now it's the enemy together with the slippy conditions in a railing enclosed shared bicycle path.

On MY Virtue Truck, no pedaling, I fly down the bridge in the 40kph range. It's a long fairy steep gradient and what ever 'terminal velocity' is on a bicycle it is reached pretty much straight away on this bridge! In the snow, long tail or not you get no time to correct if things go wrong. As I mentioned before, I may be stupid but I'm not an idiot (it's on my business card!) therefore I gently work the back brake only, in a Cadence style, which still caused the back end to drift if I dithered too long or squeezed the hydraulic brake lever a fraction to hard. But I was still gaining speed!!! At the bottom is a swift bend to the left with a convoluted steel railing that has its top bar positioned a foot into the bike lane! This, I really wished to avoid. I really NEEDED to get my speed down. Fortunately along the right of the bike lane is a two foot wall separating me from the cars which from about half way down the bridge had sheltered the edge of the path from most of the snow. I could just about get my wheels on there and brake a bit harder before the next street light post that consumes 18" of bike lane. Weave round that concrete encrusted ankle smasher and brake again, all the way down the bridge. From space it must have looked like I was playing in the snow, but from space you can't see me sweat in fear. Maybe I AM an idiot? Only once I got to the bottom, round the bend and parked outside the Liquor Store could I finally take a breath, relax my shoulders, look back and think 'what fun'!!!

The Spicy Curry cargo bags can hold a lot of stuff. All my daily things, repair kit, tubes, spare clothing, lunch bag, rubber boots, etc. So there was still plenty of room for a bottle of wine, which, by the way, I had just TOTALLY earned. The nice problem was that unlike my pair of 20 litre panniers where it's often a task to squeeze a bottle in, with this bike it's the opposite, a bottle can roll around and get broken. I did briefly consider buying lots of bottles so they would all jam together to avoid breakage, but that's a LOT of wine in these bags. I guessed if wine bottles were plastic and you are carrying nothing else I could fit 20+ bottles per side. Plus a Stilton and a large bag of peanuts. If I had the front basket fitted then that would take several party trays of sushi and you can still have two little kids on the back if you fit the special seats. I prefer to stick with just the wine and sushi! Simply putting the bottle in my lunch bag fixed this delicious dilemma.

Four kilometers later when I rolled into my building foyer I also managed to bring in a lot of slush hidden under the back, clinging to the bags and wheel guards. This meant riding round to the garage entrance and giving the bike a quick spray down under the back with a hose. A LOT of snow fell away doing this, so if you have a garage I would just park it there, I have an apartment so I needed to get it all off, bit of a negative for me if I was going to commute on this in the snow. 

In Vancouver where snow is rare I would absolutely use this to commute on because it powers convincingly up the hills and bridges, very comfortable ride even with the stock saddle. It stops like nothing I've ever ridden before, my face kinda kept going the first time I tried the brakes. It just feels solid and safe, like shares in Apple:-) The display is large and easy to read, which for a gentleman of my vintage is important. I love the green frame colour, I think it's called 'Green Curry'... funny. And most importantly I can carry all my stuff to the beach for a BBQ and all my kit when I go camping, yet it's still nimble enough for day to day commuting with the self satisfying knowledge I can carry any last minute purchases home with ease should that Craigs List conversation actually bear fruit or I roll past a wine in plastic bottles sale.

I am forever on the mission to find THE perfect bike for my lifestyle and this comes soooo close. All it needs is to be 12" shorter, better range for the money and have a 20" front wheel too. I would still buy one tho, with snow tires.