E-Bikes & Bikes Customised to You
Hi, everyone. I'm Alanna. Welcome to the channel. Today, I'm going to talk to you about what it's like to ride a bike as a short woman. So I'm going to give you some tips. We'll go for a ride, and I'll tell you how I use my bike as someone who's on the shorter side.
So the E-bike that I have is the EVRYjourney 500 Watt by sixthreezero. I've had it for a little over a year now. So this is my bike. I chose the periwinkle color, and it has three riding modes. The batteries are back here. It takes about two hours to fully charge if it's completely depleted. And once it's fully charged, I can go for about 30 to 40 miles on pedal assist and 20 miles using full throttle. All right, let's go for a ride.
Okay, let's go. So I'm 5'1, and I typically bike around my neighborhood. It's pretty bikeable for LA, but on the weekends, I do like to do a little more trail riding. I have a back rack on my car, so that makes it easy to take my bike out to some more adventurous trails and get off the pavement. But when shopping for a bike, I guess something really important to me was that I find a bike that felt like a good fit because I am so short. I didn't want something that would feel bulky or hard to control, but I also wanted something cute. So the EVRYjourney seemed to meet all of those requirements.
And a few features that were key to me and I think are important for anyone who's on the shorter side to look for in a bike are, first, having a low step-through frame. So what that means, and I'll show you what that looks like a little bit later, but the front top tube is lower, so makes it easy to step over and get on your bike and get off your bike, which can come in handy if you're short like me, and it's too cumbersome to swing your leg over the back. Especially if you have a back rack or a basket or something like that on your rear rack, you don't want to swing your leg overall of that. So having the low step-through frame makes it easy to get on.
The second feature that I think is really important is forward pedaling. So it's really important to me to be able to put my feet on the ground when I stop. I just feel more secure, and I like to be able to put my feet down. So typically with a bike, the pedals are directly beneath your seat, but with this bike, they're moved forward about six inches, and that allows me to get full leg extension, but still, keep my seat low enough that I can put my feet flat on the ground. So I'd say for anyone else who is around my height or even 5'2 or 5'3, if it's really important to you to be able to put your feet down on the ground or if you are worried about balance and especially if it's a new bike or you are new to biking, then definitely want a bike with forward pedaling.
So those are key features to look for, and now, I'll talk a little bit about how the bike works and how I use it. So there are three riding modes. First would be standard motor off. It basically functions like a normal bike. And you can even take the battery out, so it's even a little lighter, but basically, you're doing all the work.
And then the second mode would be pedal assist, and this is the method that I use the most. Pedal-assist is when you're pedaling, the motor kicks in and gives you a little boost, and this has five levels. So right now, I'm in level one, and I'm pretty out of breath because I'm talking. So actually, I'm going to ramp it up to two. And pedal assist is great, especially if you're using your bike for anything exercise or if you live in a pretty hilly area because you can just ramp up the pedal-assist whenever you need to. And the third mode... Oh, but like I was saying, you still feel like you're doing some of the work if that's important to you. In pedal assist, you are still pedaling, but it's less strenuous than riding a normal bike.
And lastly would be throttle. A throttle is a throttle. You just push it, and the bike does all the work. Right now, I'm using the throttle, and let's see how fast I'm going. I'm hitting 20 miles per hour, which I'm going to slow down now, but no pedaling, you can hit 20, max. If you are using pedal assist and throttle together, I think you can hit up to 28 miles, which I've never gotten to that speed, and I don't think I want to. But if you're into that, if you're a speed demon, then, by all means, you can do that.
So throttle is also great. I like to use it for crossing intersections. Of course, you always want to cross through that intersection as quickly as possible and stay out of harm's way. So throttle allows you to do that. But those are the three riding modes making the bike pretty versatile because you can use it for exercise. You can use it for commuting, but you can also use it for casual days when you just want to have a lazy ride and get some sun and fresh air, but don't necessarily want to do any work.
So those are the three riding modes, and I'm coming up to an intersection right now. So I'll pull over, and I'll show you the step-through frame and the forward pedaling.
Okay. I mean, this is kind of a weird place to stop and show you. So I think I'm going to keep riding and try to find something more picturesque.
I don't know if I talked about this earlier, but I think I did mention battery. So I guess I'll talk more about the battery. The range is 20 to 30 miles using pedal assist. Oh, sorry. 30 to 40 miles using pedal assist. And so that's going to vary depending on your terrain. If you're biking uphill, it's going to be more in the 30, closer to 30 miles, but if you're on flat ground and you are doing a lot of pedaling, then you can hit 40 miles. And if you're going to throttle the whole time, and don't want to do any work, you can bike for 20 miles. So that's pretty nice.
It's great, if you're going on a really long ride or if you're exercising because what happens to me a lot is I get super ambitious about my bike ride and when it comes time to turn around and bike home, I'm exhausted. So it's nice to have the throttle to kind of rely on for that second half of my ride. Okay. I guess let's stop here, and I'll show you the pedal assist, I'm sorry, the frame, step-through frame and forward pedaling.
Okay. So here is what I'm talking about when I say step-through frame. Right now, of course, I don't have anything on my rack, but especially if I had a basket or bags, my pannier on, it'd be hard to swing your leg over. So having the step-through frame, you can easily mount, dismount and get on.
And then this is what I mean by the forward pedaling. Normally, pedals are right below. The seat here, are a few inches forward, so I can get full leg extension while pedaling and still put my feet on the ground, which is nice when I come to a stop. I can just put my feet on the ground, and catch my balance. And I think that's something really important to look for if you are short like me.
Thanks for riding with me. Hopefully, I gave you some useful insight into what it's like e-biking as a short woman. If you are in the market for an E-bike, check out sixthreezero.com and use my promo code ALANNA15, and you'll get 15% off on any E-bike. So check it out. And if you have any tips for biking as a short woman or any tips for me, leave them in the comments below, but thank you for watching, and happy riding.