19, 20- Corvallis, OR - Day 7 and 8

June 20 - Much cooler temperatures today. Pretty nice. I rode the bus into town this morning to look for a bicycle helmet. Thank you Corvallis for the free bus service and the nice app with real time updates. Afterwards, I went to Starbucks with my mom and niece. I think I’m pretty caught up with work on the trailer for now. I think…

June 21 - Bridget is back from Chicago and after dropping the dogs off at my mom’s place for the day, we went back to sorting out the trailer for storage. Emptied out the refrigerator and freezer, as well as any boxed items or things that won’t keep for a couple of months. And sorted through tools and other items that we will be bringing back to Alaska. Things like the generators and kitchen appliances will be left for when we continue the trip.

When we dropped off the dogs, my FedEx shipment arrived. Since our RV isn’t heavy enough to carry any sort of motorcycle, I started looking at electric pedal-assist folding bicycles. Lynne at Curvyroads.info posted a review of the GB500 fat tire bike sold by Greenbikeusa.com and it sounded ideal. But they wouldn’t ship to Alaska. Last Saturday, I ordered one and left a note that it had to arrive by today or the order was cancelled. They shipped it out on Monday afternoon and it arrived today, Thursday, at 11am. And this was using the free shipping option. 

After the 48volt/15.6 amp-hr battery charged for a while, I pumped the tires up to 30 psi (their max) and rode around the fairgrounds a bit. Actually around 5 miles as it was almost effortless. There are 9 levels of pedal assist meaning you just start pedaling and you can feel the rear hub mounted motor kicking in. If you don’t want to pedal at all, there is a thumb throttle. Since I was still getting used to the bike, I kept the speed down to about 16 mph. I’ve never ridden a full suspension bicycle before so that will take some adjustment but it rode pretty well. The bike is taller than I expected. For me, the seat and handlebars are as low as they go. Originally, we were thinking of ordering two but it’s too large of a frame for Bridget. I’ll do a more thorough review later. This was just initial impressions. 

Enough playing around. Back to sorting through stuff...