I have ridden and raced motorcycles since I was a young boy, but sometime around 2005 I began to lose interest. I was sick of the noise, the air filters, the maintenance, and the beat down that a dirt bike could do to my body. It was at this time that my interest in pedal mountain biking was peaking and I had moved to Moab from the midwest. I was beginning to enjoy the quiet, more natural experience that the bicycle gave me. I sold my racing dirt bike and got a dual sport. Then I trimmed down even further to an air cooled, play bike that I mainly used to facilitate self mountain bike shuttle rides. For the first time in my life I let my dirt bike magazine subscriptions run out. I had become a mountain biker.
After my years away from the dirt bike world I began to dream of something in-between. Being raised at 500 ft of elevation in Missouri, the high altitudes of Colorado and Utah were hardly fun on a regular bicycle. I wanted to go further faster. A friend of mine was into electric motors and I ran a bicycle store. He built me hub motor and I laced it to a fat bike rim and we mounted a heavy battery to the Surly Pugsley frame. The night before I was to ride the bike for the first time I had a dream. In the dream I was silently railing corners, lifting the front wheel on exit, and flying over double jumps.
The next morning my friend, Josh, unloaded our new creation out of his van and I took off down the street for my first ride. IT SUCKED! It was under powered, heavy, flexy, and looked stupid to boot! It was nothing like in my dream. Josh, sensing my disappointment, took the opportunity to offer me my money back out of the project, thus scoring a Surly Pugsley at bike shop wholesale cost. My dream would have to wait...
Fast forward 8 years...In those years my dream has become a reality. E-Bikes are the next big thing and the technology is blowing up. I'm excited to get to be a part of this. This blog will be a journey down my path of real, hard core, fully legit, electrified mountain biking.
Stay tuned, as we explore what these bikes can do, what they really are, the political aspects of them, and the tech geekery of the bikes themselves.
Thanks for reading...
Commandon Landon
