Oh, what a breeze!

08 October 2012 - 02:30 By Andrea Nagel
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Andrea Nagel's electric bike trips were full of smiles and curious glances
Andrea Nagel's electric bike trips were full of smiles and curious glances

''Life is like riding a bicycle," said Albert Einstein. ''In order to keep your balance, you must keep moving."

These days, to keep moving, we need all the help we can get, and to keep your life in balance it's really good to get on a bike.

Help on the bike comes in the form of a rechargeable battery on the back of a two-wheeler, the A2B Electric Bicycle.

The machine is made in Germany and imported to South Africa by Cycology.

I borrowed two bikes for a week to see what the urban bicycling lifestyle is all about.

I'm not new to biking. I ride the Argus Cycle Challenge, the Momentum 94.7 Cycle Challenge and frequent many of the mountain-biking routes in the Johannesburg area.

When I go biking, I collect the day's sensations: the bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blooming jacarandas, jasmine and a hadedawarning to ''look out below".

The only reminder of the clamouring cogs of work are headlines briefly glimpsed while riding, and the newspaper sellers manning street corners.

Bike riding means leaving preoccupations behind and focusing on nature and people.

But not too much nature: no one needs to be reminded of the body's exertion against gravity by sweat dripping when you arrive at your destination.

That's where the battery pack comes in handy. Muscle power for the downhill, throttle for the inclines.

Journalist Sloan Wilson wrote that a shaky child on a bicycle needed support and freedom. The A2B Mobility Electric Bike gives both.

While facing major peaks in Johannesburg such as the Northcliff Hill, Sylvia Pass, Krugersdorp Hill and Munro Drive, confidence can fail and legs can give out during that last 10m incline.

That's when you hope you remembered to charge the battery pack the night before.

The 35km the pack accommodates made my ride to and from work a breeze.

My trips to the office were full of happy smiles and curious glances from motorists and pedestrians alike. Riding the bike for a week freed me from parking issues, the confinement of the car cabin and put me, as poet Diane Ackerman eloquently puts it, ''mentally away from civilisation so that the world was breaking someone else's heart".

The electric bike experience is really suited to a city like Johannesburg because most of the places you want to be, like the Neighbourgoods Market in Braamfontein, Arts on Main in the Maboneng District or lunching in Parkhurst, are in fairly close proximity.

What separates them are massive hills (well, massive from the perspective of pedal power).

These are no problem with some extra vooma. But it wasn't the speed with which I could travel, the power of the throttle or the fetching look of the bikes that impressed me most about my A2B Mobility experience.

It was the silence with which I could get around. When I wasn't interacting with fellow road users, I could meditate while riding, enjoying the combination of speed and silence.

Professor and writer James E Starrs, another bike lover, wrote that melancholy is incompatible with bicycles.

Getting around with an electric bike makes the aches, pains and strains incompatible too.

The bike costs R35000. See www.cycology.biz

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