This last weekend my wife and I volunteered for the 8th annual Rex Ride. All proceeds for this event go to the American River Parkway Foundation http://arpf.org/ which coordinates the efforts of hundreds of volunteers who contribute thousands of work hours to maintaining and improving the Parkway throughout the year. This was my second year with the event which I first learned about last year when my company had asked for volunteers to help out with it. This year we had about 16 of our employees come to help out with setup, registration, handing out t-shirts and other items for the registered riders and then cleaning up the site after the event. After my first shift I was able to go on the ride with my Optibike. Participants were able to ride as much or as little of the 60-mile route along the American River bike trail as they wished. I would estimate there were probably more than 200 riders there. I started with a full charge on my bike and ran most of the time in economy mode. At one of the rest stops I had someone come up to me and ask me ?exactly what is in that thing??. I apparently had passed him up earlier on the trail and he just knew there had to be something special about my bike to be able to do that. So I educated him about what was ?under the hood?. Nobody seemed to be upset about me using an electric bike. After all, it wasn?t a race event. Many people at the rest stops had questions about it as well so I was able to inform them about what this machine was and what great fun it was to ride. I did have great ride. My wife made it 10 miles on her Cannondale. I did about 28 miles on the Optibike along the trail so far that day. And it was not even noon yet.
When I came back we were able to enjoy a great lunch BBQ. I parked my bike in the temporary bike racks we had setup earlier that morning. Here is a picture of my Optibike among dozens of other bikes that had already returned from the ride.
After the BBQ, the second shift had to be finished so I helped with the cleanup. My wife took her bike home on the car we had used to bring them in earlier that morning. I decided to ride back home on the Optibike so I could finish going back up further on the American River Bike trail. I was able to finally check out areas of that trail that I hadn?t seen yet. When I arrived home after that long day I noticed that I had traveled a total of 42.5 miles with most of it being along the bike trail. The longest ride I have done so far on a single charge. I was drained and so was my battery.
Odometer 1334 miles