When I was in my teens and early twenties, I was an avid bicyclist.   At 16 I had saved up nearly $200 from mowing lawns at $2.50 each. ( a lot of hours spent pushing a mower)  That’s over $1000 in 2020 dollars.  I figured I had a choice between buying a dirt cheap car that would be broken most of the time or a really nice bicycle.  I opted for the bike.  The picture at the left is one I took in 2010 right before I sold it to a collector. I rode it everywhere.  As a well conditioned young person that didn’t drink or smoke, I could go for hours averaging over 20mph.  I gradually lost interest in cycling as I approached 30 and began getting very serious about smoking and drinking.
A few years after turning 50, I thought it might be a good idea to get a bit of exercise into my life and decided a return to bicycling would be the answer.  I bought an inexpensive road bike from an internet direct retailer and tuned up my wife’s old bike from back when and we started doing a bit of riding.  Damn near killed us at first.  At least it felt that way, but gradually we were able to do our loop road around the lake without feeling like we needed an oxygen mask.
I didn’t really like the cheap aluminum bike I had purchased because the ride was teeth rattling.   I liked the ride of my old school steel bike better.   For those that aren’t old bike enthusiasts, a high quality steel frame is not heavy. The tubing is .030″ thick at the ends where it is welded or brazed and .020″ in the middle.  (My Soma frame weighs about 4 lbs.  I got my old bike out and tuned it up but found the handling twitchy for an old guy and I really liked the indexed shifting (click, click, no fumbling around in between sprockets) of the newer bike.  I decided to do something I always wanted to do an build a bike up from a frame.  I bought a nice lugged steel frame from Soma in California and built up a bike.  Now I had my nice steel ride with a good quality modern 10 x 2 drivetrain.
We rode pretty regularly for 5 or 6 years, picking up a couple of hybrid bikes for riding the dirt roads along the river for a change of pace.  Somehow, it just kind of tapered down into not riding at all.  It probably had something to do with having to load them up on a bike rack and drive somewhere to ride.  The house we lived in was near the top of a hill that was almost impossible for someone not a pretty serious rider to get up. We moved to Alabama and thought the roads in our neighborhood looked flat enough to just go for a ride.   I discovered that I was just too old to be comfortable on a drop handlebar road bike, that 4 years was enough time to get seriously out of condition, and the roads weren’t as flat as they looked.  I put some flat bars and trigger shifters on the bike and we rode a few times.  It was just too exhausting to be fun and you have to get through  the exhausting part for weeks or months before it gets to be fun.  We just lacked motivation.  I’ve never had the self discipline to exercise just for the sake of exercise.  When I was young, I played basketball, tennis, and cycled because it was fun. I had been aware of e-bikes for a decade or more.  They were kind of a weird fringe subset of cycling that kind of intrigued me but I never really looked into,  I recently read an article in a motorcycle magazine where two old friends went for a ride, one on an Aventon e-bike, the other on a Honda Cub small motorcycle.  They both agreed the e-bike was a blast.  That got me thinking……  Maybe the electric helper would flatten the little hills and make cycling fun even before I got into some sort of aerobic condition again and ease the stress on our 63 year old knees.

I thought about it for a week or two and bit the bullet (or wallet) and ordered two Aventon Pace 500 e-bikes.  One of the standard model pictured at the top and one of the step through models shown on the right for Sherri.  They arrived in about 5 days.   They came in a large box, packed with cutout foam and cardboard cushioning.  The front wheel is removed and packed beside the bike.  The handlebar is removed and dangling below with all the wires and hoses attached.  The pedals are in a box along with the free rechargeable lights and reflectors.  Another box holds the charger. A manual is included as well as a multi-tool and a multi-purpose wrench that fits both axle nuts and the pedals.  All the tools you need to assemble and ride the bike are included except a compressor or air pump.

If you know your way around tools but not around bikes, there is a comprehensive assembly video on the Aventon web site.   If you are mechanically helpless, you can have a local bike shop assemble it.   If you live near me, I’ll put it together for you.  No special knowledge is needed to pull the shim out from between the brake pads and bolt the front wheel on. You do need to know something about threadless headsets to properly tension the bearings and position the steering stem.  Videos on line abound.  It’s not difficult, just not intuitive if you haven’t had one apart.  If the front fork clunks when you put on the brakes, you did it wrong.   I found the derailleur needed a slight adjustment for smoothest chain running and shifting.  It worked out of the box but needed a slight tweak.  Once again, there are videos all over about how to adjust bike shifting.

I pulled the bikes from the boxes and used the included keys to remove the batteries and take them inside for charging.  Aventon recommends to keep the batteries from extreme heat and cold for longest life. I put the bikes together, did a few final adjustments, aired up the tires, read the owners manual again, put on a jacket and helmet and we went for a shakedown cruise. First a spin down the driveway and back with the battery off just to get the feel of the bike.   Feels like a quality ride. Nice smooth bearings and shifting and the brakes are very good.  My first experience with hydraulic brakes on a bike.  Nice.

The bikes have 5 levels of pedal assist and a thumb throttle.  There is an 8 speed Shimano Altus rear cluster and derailleur and a single 42 tooth front chainwheel.  For safety reasons the thumb throttle doesn’t do anything until you have have pedaled a half revolution or so.  They don’t want the bike to take off until you mean it.   The levels of pedal assist are not so much levels of additional power but speed limits of the motor assist.  In level one, you get full motor assist up to about 12 miles per hour.  Fast than that, you are pedaling on your own.  Level two is good for 15 to 16mph of assist and on up to level five which is good for 28mph with a modest amount of pedal pressure.  You’re pedaling fast in top gear, but not that hard.  Some reviewers said they were not able to pedal fast enough to get to 28 because they were “spun out” meaning they couldn’t get any more rpm.  I am not sure why that would be as neither I nor my wife had trouble.  That was about my limit though. For comparison, 25 to 28mph is about what a world class professional cyclist can average on flat ground on a $10,000 bicycle.  Doing that as a 63 year old out of shape guy on a fat tired cruiser feels surreal.  That’s probably why a lot of traditional cyclists hate e-bikes.  It’s cheating somehow.   Well, it would be cheating if I was racing them, but I’m not.  It’s just plain fun.

The bikes are limited to 28mph in pedal assist due to several state laws that specify that speed.  You can adjust the controller through the menu to a top speed of around 32mph.  I can’t pedal that fast unless I put on a larger chainwheel and 28 seems fast enough to me. Top speed on the throttle is 20mph.   Range without pedaling at all is 20 to 30 miles.  It’s a fun bicycle though so why would you not pedal?  Range in pedal assist one at 12 mph is over 60 miles.  Middle assist at setting 3 gives you around 40 miles.  These are according to Aventon with a 165lb test rider on level ground.   Your mileage, as they say, will vary.   I would figure on 20 miles with no pedaling and somewhere in the 35 to 45 range at lower speeds.  When you run out of juice, it doesn’t stop, you are just left pedaling a 49lb bicycle on your own  and that’s not a big deal unless you run out at the bottom of a mountain.

The large, easy to read display has a big range bar across the top, mph, assist level and a total or trip odometer.  You can also bring up top speed, average speed, and trip elapsed time. You power up the bike by pushing a button on the battery pack and then another on the handlebar mounted control.   You use the up and down arrows on the control to select assist level 0 though 5.  Zero assist means you are pedaling on your own but the throttle still works.   At any time, in any assist level, you can push the throttle and stop pedaling.  The bike will maintain up to 20mph until you start pedaling again.   You can stop and catch your breath without stopping.  Awesome.  When you stop, you take off as any other bike and the assist will smoothly get you back up to the speed determined by the assist level you are in.

A few on line reviews have complained about the sudden nature of the assist, wishing it came in more gradually.   I don’t see a problem.  The motor is 500 watts with a 750 watt peak output.  750 watts is about one horsepower.  500 is 2/3 horsepower.  Even if you only weigh 120lbs, you have at most one horsepower accelerating 170lbs of bike and rider.  That’s about 1/4 the horsepower to weight ratio of an original WV Beetle.   We are not talking top fuel dragster here.  Some expensive e-bikes have a torque sensor that senses how hard you are pedaling and assists accordingly.  This bike has a cadence sensor that senses how fast you are pedaling.  Mostly it just senses that you are pedaling and gives you full assist until you reach the speed limit of the selected level.  In practice it’s never more than a gentle push.     The other common complaint is that you have to pedal before the throttle works.  Some would like the throttle to assist them to get started.  I see Aventon’s point.  Putting the bike in first gear and pedaling a few feet isn’t that hard and accidently bumping the throttle when you weren’t planning to move is a real possibility.    There is also a walking mode where the bike will move at 2.5mph as long as you hold the button down and walk beside it.  Unless the bike is seriously loaded down with stuff, I can’t imagine why I need this.  It might come in handy.  Who knows?

If you used to like to ride bicycles and it’s just too hard to be fun any more, this makes it fun again.  It’s still exercise when you are pedaling and your fitness level will improve while you are smiling away.  Aventon does not let you return bikes after trying them but there are other manufacturers such as Rad Power that have trial periods.   You can also see if you can find a dealer nearby.  There are none near me.    Click this link to see the bike on Aventon’s site.