I bought an ebike as I was moving to the island. Anything with a lithium battery can be difficult and expensive to buy here, so I bought the same bike my son has (which I liked) and left it in the original packages to come here with our household goods. That was in September 2024.
It took weeks to arrive by boat, getting here in October 2024. At that time, though, I had neither the time nor the imperative to put it together (it comes pretty much assembled, just folded) and I had no practical way to charge it anyway. It wasn’t until April 2025 that I got it up and running, only to discover that the combination of my size and the long, steep roads on our mountain were too much for it. I can only ride it around our mountainside neighborhoods — if I ride down into the village, it will overheat and turn off on the way back up the mountain. It isn’t geared low enough that I can pedal it up the mountain. I do ride around the ‘hood, though, as it’s a beautiful ride, good exercise (still too steep to get around with out some serious pedaling), gets me around to local activities (which has mostly been yoga classes, unfortunately currently on hiatus), and checking range of the various radios some neighbors and I are working to deploy for emergency communications.
Still the bike only had 55 miles on it when I rode to a CERT meeting last Saturday. That’s less than I’d ride on an average weekend when I lived in San Diego.
My right foot felt wrong: it kept trying to slip off the pedal. When I was able to stop (did I mention the roads are steep?) I looked at it and realized that the pedal was loose. That was odd — it certainly wasn’t loose when I’d started the ride. I reached down to finger-tighten in so that it wouldn’t get looser, and it fell on the ground, the threads inside the crank completely stripped away. Ugh.
I emailed the manufacturer and explained that I realized that I was a few weeks out of warranty but would appreciate some special consideration given the severity of the failure after so little actual use. They agreed, but of course I’m unable to take it to a dealer for repair (the closest being about 2,400 ocean miles away). I said I’d be happy to do the repair myself, but need parts. They agreed to send the parts, free of charge, and even included the spline tool. Good on them! But…
They don’t ship to the islands. I get that they don’t ship whole bikes to the islands, because shipping lithium batteries is fraught. But, no, they won’t even ship parts. So I had them send the parts to my father-in-law who I’m hoping will be able to ship them on to me.
The frustrating thing is that they shipped using the US Postal Service, so all they had to do was put my PO box address on the label and they would have come directly to me. The USPS ships to Alaska and Hawaii on the same terms as to anywhere else in the US, just slower. Sigh.
With luck, though, I’ll be back up and pedaling in a few weeks.
—2p
addendum 2025-11-09T16:54-10:00
The replacement parts arrived Thursday. I haven’t had a chance to install them yet, but it appears everything is there and I’ll be biking again soon.