Thursday the tempature got up to 47 degrees so I took off of work a half an hour early so I could go get a hour of riding in. I had everything with me and went to Greenfield Pkwy to ride for an hour or so. Five miles into the ride the Bionx failed again. It just quit working. It went off and just would not come on. I got back to the van and was so cold I dicided to just go home.
I have decided to remove the Bionx system for Turtle and try to ride with out it
I have always had a love-hate relationship with my Bionx system. It helped me a lot when I first was trying to ride but I have been feeling more and more that it is hurting me more than helping me now. I have become very dependent on it not to be able to get myself to ride with out it because I love the speed and there for the distance I can do with it. I love going fast and riding long distances.
The Boinx has 4 levels of assistance. 1 is 35%, 2 is 75%, 3 is 150% and 4 is 300% assistance. What this means is that when it is on 2, which is where I use mine about 95% of the time it will add up to 75% of the power in addition to the power I am putting into the pedals. So if I am producing for example 100 watts based on it's program it will add up to 75 watts to the rear wheel. Of course it does not supply 75 watts all the time just enough to get you to the speed it is programed to get you to with the amount of torque you are appling to the pedals. On flats and down hills it does nothing once you are up to speed. It does help a lot going up hills and to a lessor extent when accelrating up to speed and in head winds. So what this means to my cycling is that instead of climbing hills a between 8 and 12 mph I will be climbing them at about 2 to 4 mph. This means I will take 4 or more times the time to climb hills than I have been and there is just no way I can rede with real cyclist in groups like I have been. I do beleive I can do the distance or at least the shorter one for now and will get to where I can do the longer rides in time. Until I lose a lot more weight I will still be climbing hills very slowly. This is going to be very hard for me. So I will likely not do many if any groug rides for a while maybe a long while. I already have problems being accepted as a serous cyclist because I ride a trike and the Boinx just made this worse based on the questions I was asked and comments I have heard which I am sure I was not suppose to hear(one of the problems of having unusually good hearing). I will be back to solo cycling and most likely mostly from Garner because it is a nice area to ride and it is easy and cheap.
What to do about the Tour for Cure - I beleive I will continue to plan to ride it. I do not have to ride 75 miles each day if that is too much. Last year I rode with the Bionx on level 1 the whole ride and the two batteries still did not last the whole ride and I ended up ride about 8 miles each day with out it. Also it will not be necessay to worry about electricity when camping there or at any other rides or events I go to. That will be nice. I also plan to still do the Spring CNC - once again there are a number of routes to choose from and they are all supported and again not requirement for electricity at the camp site.
Let see if I can come up with other pluses to this besides not needed electricity when at multi-day event. Well once I remove all the hardware, replace the rear wheel and not be carrying the two batteries the trike will lose about 24 pounds. I am sure it will not make up the differents for the power the Bionx added but it is something. Also it will make cycling simpler, no battaries to worry about and deal with. Just pump up the tires, turn on the GPS and music and ride. I have been thinking I want to try going back to the Bar-end shifter and removing the Bionx console will make the possible space wise. When I do ride I will still be on my triek but ti will be just me and when I got to the level where I can ride well enough it will be just me not me and my "cheater", the Bionx, as it has been called.
