I asked for your help & with many thanks you did!

Almost a year ago I wrote a blog asking for help "I need your help & hopefully you can" to help me get an eBike to try start cycling to work & with many many thanks a fair few of you did.

And with being so busy with life, work etc (the usual life stuff we all have to put up with). I have been neglectful in thanking everyone & updating as to what is happening so this blog is for you & anyone interested in how it all went & what is happening.

Well with all your help we raised £750 & with help of Cycling Made Easy in Coulsdon who had a customer selling a secondhand one in good condition & with warranty with the shop themselves, it was enough to go buy it.

And as soon as I got it home I used the remainder of the funds (& a bit more) to kit it out with new comfy Brooks saddle, mudguards, etc...

And I did try it out & rode it to work tho found the automatic gears a hindrance on the hills, so upgraded them to a nice Sturmey Archer 3 speed internal hub.

 

And this proved to help the bike & extend the battery life as not fighting the automatic gears. And I have ridden the bike to work a few times now but the route has been worked on in the time I was working on getting an ebike & Highway England made a right hash of it & made the route more awful than ever (A12 survey report of the incomplete & shoddy works between Witham & Marks Tey) which I am trying to get sorted. Anyway despite this I am using the ebike to get to work every now & then, unfortunately not as often as I like.

But I am using it when I would normally get the bus to town when not feeling up to cycling, to carry heavier loads & to do larger amount of shopping & proving an asset to get to work on bank holidays & other seasonal holidays where there is no bus available & trains are a mess.

 

Even used her to do a lovely 20 mile cycle ride on Christmas day to explore areas I haven't been around Colchester.

So the ebike is proving more useful even if the original idea was to use it to cycle to work hasn't gone quite to plan, which I have not given up on doing. And here is my ebike in her glory now after all the changes & now I call her Dutchess. And it's thanks to all of you who helped that made this possible.

But I have plans to still cycle to work & with my disability getting worse, I am now planning ahead by looking at building my own ebike using a similar bike to my Electra Townie which is quite comfortable to ride. So be looking at getting an Electra Cruiser with an additional 11 gear Hub Gear to replace what's supplied on the bike.

And I have already acquired the gear hub in the sales recently so need to get the bike next. Then I will sell Dutchess to cover the costs of the ebike Conversion kit & installation of it as I feel it be unfair to ask for help again.

I'm undetermined where to get the conversion kit from atm but likely go with Cyclotricity as the mechanic I use fits them on other bikes with no issues & would be good to use him for the warranty side of things. Then I will have a bike more suited to my needs & try again to cycle to work. 

It hasn't been as straightforward as I hoped it could be but it's been a learning curve & very productive. And again I like to thank everyone for their support in this goal, it may not gone quite how I wanted it but we knew it was a chance it wouldn't work but it is getting there & learning from it.

I need your help & hopefully you can

Note: Updates to the blog are at the bottom of the blog, scroll to this if you just want to read the update.

To all my followers; friends & relatives,

Many of you know some years back at around 2011 I returned to cycling after a 20yr gap to help overcome my disability & try to become stick free. And that the disability is fighting back & so far I am not stick free, just need it at times but still cycling to keep it at bay.

And since then I have used this to help promote #getfitgetactive campaign with English Federation of Disability Sport  to show we all can cycle & be active with disabilities (Something I wish I did more when I became disabled decades ago). Part of this was a video done with the EFDS.

Despite my disability fighting back, I still strive to keep pushing the boundaries of my cycling. Built Roadrunner & saved hard to by a new Cruiser style bike that is set-up to make cycling easier for my legs. As well as try do charities ride like I had done a couple years ago.

But the next goal is to try get an eBike to be able to cycle the 22 miles to work as the public transport really sucks & they aint getting better. Now I have spent quite some time looking in this, had to find a light one I can get up the stairs at an affordable price. Even took a day trip to the London Bike show to road test a few as I found most shops just don't stock them to try out in store. And I did find one at quite a reasonable price/mileage & weight I require, the Momentum Upstart.

And at £1350, it's not too badly priced & reviews aren't too bad too. So now just need to get the money, I was hoping to save up over the year & have it by Christmas. Unfortunately situations have changed in the new year & with needing to finance vet bills, new glasses, bed replacement, etc as well as limited hours at work due to disability, I'm finding finances just covers what's needed each month & I don't have any luxuries to cut out. On top of that, public transport is getting far worse & is now effecting my ability to get to work on time (or at all in some cases) & this affects my job & I really like to keep it. I have tried to look at other alternatives, cycle to work scheme that I cant apply for as I don't pay taxes on my wages as I'm part time. Financing isn't an option as if I cant save the money, I sure can't pay the financing. Oh & not to forget the repair costs to my Cruiser bike from a hit & run driver last week.

So this is where I need your help, it has been suggested I should try this by others to try it so I will put it here for you. Would you like to send me a gift of just a few pounds to a crowd-funding account to get the funds to buy this eBike? If only 2/3 of those that know me put in around £3 then that would be enough to get the eBike & make me so humbled & grateful to those who sent me a fantastic gift which will support me in continuing to keep on cycling.

I aint one to ask for money, this wasn't easy choice for me & I have been reluctant to do it in this way. But with the way things are with travelling to work, it's either get the eBike or try find work closer to home. And to be honest I love where I work & those I work with & that is why I have finally got myself to ask you all this so I can stay working where I enjoy to be. And if you do send me a gift to this link gofundme.com/taxakswk, then thankyou ever so much!

Update 11th April 2016

Well its coming up to the end of the first week & what a great start its been, the funding is at 27% & still slowly increasing & its all thanks to those wonderful people who believe in me & the power of cycling.

So as I'm updating this blog, I thought you would like to see the route I would do in the picture below.

I did this route back in 2014 when my legs were a bit better & went to watch the Tour de France on the other side of Chelmsford, as I have said before the route is feasible but not when I have to spend the day at work on my feet all day too.

It's the end of 2015 & my cycling didn't go as planned...

Having a bout of Flu at the moment & off work, it's clear I wont be doing any cycling for the last week of the year. So I thought I would look over the stats of my cycling for 2015.

After doing so well during 2014 for to then end not as good as I hoped due to left Knee locking up, I thought I could get back to the level I was in during the Summer of 2014 by improving myself again in 2015.

Unfortunately that definitely did not go as planned as my knee locked up yet again in the Spring of 2015 & off the bike. So I finally got to see specialists too to find out after years of being told my knee issues were muscle weakness, my knee wasn't improving when the muscles were. That's when I finally got to the bottom of the issue of my knee & finally found out I have Osteoarthritis caused by decades of low activity & constant stick use.

This meant I will never be fully stick free & I have to adjust my lifestyle to try not lock my knee up again & that includes my cycling. On top of that, my other leg is starting to 'follow in the footsteps' so to speak of my left leg which is making walking & cycling all the harder.

So, despite all this the stats for the year don't actually look too bad considering all that's gone on with my legs...

Not as consistent in mileage month to month but I have managed to cycle every month & you can see April & August is where the legs were playing up on me, December I was busy working extra hours so my days off were actual rest days as I needed them.

But when I compare this year to previous years, I was more happy with what I saw...

Yes it's a lot less than 2014 but still better than the previous years to 2014, far more cycling done than I thought I had done that's for sure.

Of course the mileage & time I cycled is just part of the picture, due to the revelations of my ongoing leg issues & continuing disabilities it was time to re-adjust my way of cycling. So it was time to do that by searching for a more suitable bike.

Meanwhile whilst searching for that bike, I was approached by the English Federation of Disability Sports to create a short film on disabled cycling following the article I did with them the year before (Active Summer Fun: "Cycling is an activity that’s possible for anyone"). So I helped make the film in the Summer & was a joy to do. 

Whilst waiting for the filming to be compiled I continued on my quest on a better bike for my disability, well I found it. I bought an Electra Townie for its unusual but innovative Flat Foot Technology frame at the end of October. This lightweight bike with unusual pedalling ergonomics has made cycling easier, even on day one when I collected from the bike shop & cycled it back home 22 miles away. :) 

Have to thank Cycles UK for suggesting this bike where other bike shops didn't want to really help in my search.

So its now near the end of the year & December was the release date for the EFDS films under their "Me, being active" campaign which I am proud to be part of as I now have seen the positive results & here is my story: "Me, being active" - Wolf's Story but I do highly recommend reading the others who contributed at EFDS marks International Day for Disabled People with Me, being active films.

So 2015 has been a fairly mixed bag of going ons & even tho it wasn't how I hoped the year would've panned out, I sure aint disappointed in how the year went for cycling considering all the factors & have proved quite productive. So what's the plan for next year, well more of the same I guess. My new bike is still need of adding more mileage & see what I can do in long rides on her being she is my lovely 'Cruiser' now.

But I do have a bigger plan which is to get a bike to be suitable to ride to work on every shift & back & still be able to work too of course. For this it'll have to be an eBike, which of course I have found one & it aint cheap. It's the Electra Townie GO, basically same as my new bike but with a Bosch engine in it & a very long range per charge, definitely suitable for the 45 miles commute to work & back each day.

 

But with other commitments & usual living costs, the 2 grand it costs means I wont be getting it anytime soon. It has been suggested I should try crowdfunding for this bike, not something I'm comfy in doing but will think it over. It would be good to find one to try out tho to be sure it would suit me & if so saved up for in time for this time next year but that would be tight to do.

So here's to the approaching 2016 & see what this new year will bring for my cycling. :)