Off-Season Dreaming: Mrs. Pragmatic

Since the temperature’s plummeted and my bike has been relegated to the basement, I haven’t posted much. But lately I have the itch to plan the coming season’s adventures.

Much to my surprise, Mrs. Pragmatic expressed that she was a little envious of my trips in 2024 and might like to try coming along! She’s indicated that she’s nervous about the physical demands or if she could keep up with me. (In my view, I don’t think it’s much of a concern, as slow as I am! But I respect her caution.)

So there’s a popular and obvious solution to that – an ebike for her, and a muscle-only bike for me. I started to think through this scenario. Ebikes are wonderful but quite expensive if you’re unsure you will really use one. I love to shop and research, though, so I could not help but start digging around.

They seem to have fallen into two broad categories, the consumer/cheaper/start-up company bikes like Ride1Up, Aventon, Lectric, Velotric and the like, and the older bike manufacturers’ electrified efforts such as Trek, Specialized, or Salsa. A dilemma surfaced pretty quickly – a cheap one might not really be a bargain if it didn’t wear well, was incompatible with standard bike parts or was plain irritating to use on a tour, but the offerings from traditional bike brands I would trust are dramatically more expensive. I tend to gravitate toward the nicer and more traditional ones, but then that might be a bit of projection of what I would want over what Mrs. Pragmatic would want or need.

In any case, it feels like a purchase isn’t the place to start. Instead, I have been thinking over how we could do an overnight together without sinking the money into a bike, until we find out if we really like this together.

My current plan is to take a trail like the Root River or Sparta-Elroy that we can drive to easily, and where there’s a shop that will rent us a decent ebike for two days. Then I can load up Sheila, my touring bike, with the gear that I own already, and the two of us can do about a 30 mile out-and-back overnight. This seems like it’ll be much more economical than buying a bike, as fun as that would be.

Looking over all the gear I put together in 2024, provided we go in warm weather, I think we would only need a second (or double) sleeping mat, that will fit in my existing Nemo Dragonfly 2P, and we could share most of the rest. The tent will be a little snug for two, but we could be comfortable like that for a short trip.

I’m really excited for us to try this together – it should be a lot of fun.