Wednesday, January 19, 2022

My First eBike: an Orbea Gain


My new Orbea Gain, right off the truck, with no pedals and the seat too high. This post is by no means a review of the Orbea Gain. For reasons which may become apparent, I am in no position to provide that. Rather, this post is a description of my personal journey through a most unusual bicycle acquisition experience. 



About ten months ago my son Michael decided I needed an eBike. Why, and why just then? From time to time Michael becomes aware of my mortality. (This is not a newsflash about my health, it's just that the Bible promises us 70 years and I am 72.) According to Michael, this was one of those times. His reasoning was as follows:
  • I had just moved to Emerald Hills and because of those hills, was finding it hard to do easy rides.
  • It would allow us to ride together, my electric assist making up for his younger age.
  • It might be fun for me to try some modern, high end bicycle technology.
  • Given my age, I did not have an unlimited number of years of riding ahead of me so if I was going to do this, I might as well do it now to make the most of those years.
Because of the pandemic and associated supply chain issues, bicycles were (and are) hard to come by. Michael had gotten on the Internet and found what he thought was the perfect bike for me, available for immediate delivery, an Orbea Gain. Because of the bike shortage, he didn’t want me to miss this opportunity so was eager for me to follow up quickly, much more quickly than I found comfortable. I trust both of my sons very much so despite my deep concerns about buying a bike online rather than from a store and my feeling that I had not had time to think about what kind of bike I wanted, I closed my eyes and pressed the “Buy” button. A few days later, the bike arrived at my door.

What kind of bike is an Orbea Gain? It is an eBike built on the platform of a high end, thoroughly modern gravel bike. I am partial to bicycles manufactured by Bianchi, a fact Michael knows, but Bianchi’s eBike offering, their Aria, is built off the platform of a road bike and thus Michael felt that as a result it was not as appropriate a bike for me as the Orbea. Compared to the Aria, the Gain has a more relaxed geometry, wider tires, and lower gears (50x34 in front and 11x32 in back.)

What do I mean when I say the Orbea is high end and thoroughly modern? Pretty much everything on the Orbea that can be, is made of carbon fiber. It has Shimano Ultegra electronic derailleurs. It has Shimano hydraulic disk brakes. All the cables and wires run inside the frame to minimize wind drag and to optimize appearance. It does not go out of its way to advertise that it is an eBike; the battery is hidden inside of a rather normal looking downtube and the motor is in the rear hub. Anyone knowledgeable who looks at it will be able to see it for what it is, but it does have the general appearance of a normal bike. As for the electric side of things, it has no throttle, it only provides pedal assist. If I don’t push, it doesn’t help. It has three levels of assist plus a fourth no-assist setting. This was by far the most expensive  bike I have ever purchased; inflation doesn't even begin to offset that.

How was it, buying a bike on the Internet? The vendor, Contender Bicycles, Inc., was terrific. They seemed to be surprised to get such a large order out of the blue and called to thank me for it and to assure me I could contact them any time for help, an offer on which I have taken them up. They suggested that I take advantage of a shipper they used that does nothing but transport bicycles, which I did. It meant I got the bike a few days later than I would have but guaranteed my new bike would be handled with the care it deserved. The truck arrived and when the driver opened the back, I could see that all the bikes were held in bike-specific racks. He carefully removed my bike, reattached the front wheel, and that was that.

My first reaction to this amazing new bike was overwhelming fear that I would do something to damage it. My new Orbea came with no paper manuals and the manuals I found online were insufficient in my view, at least to a modern carbon fiber novice like me. I called Contender and they confirmed that what I found was all that was available but again reassured me they would be there to help. One thing that the online manuals did tell me was the torque required for every nut and bolt on the bike, so I ordered a torque wrench set from Amazon. I had to call Contender to find out how to raise and lower the saddle. They warned me about the pitfalls I should watch out for when I did that; the invisible bolt that held the saddle, if loosened too much, could fall into the seat tube, creating an adventure that the kind folks at Contender assured me I did not want. It turns out that, because the frame is carbon, I cannot put this bike on the bike rack on my car, a rack that supports a bike by the frame’s top tube, nor can I put it on my repair stand; both the top tube and the seatpost where the stand would attach are carbon. Someone on the Internet suggested getting an aluminum seatpost to swap in just to work on the bike. Contender warned me not to do that, so no repair stand for me. Even absent a repair stand, I did get the seat height adjusted without incident and put some old, low-end SPD pedals on the bike so I could go for a test ride.

The first thing I noticed was that the front disk brake rubbed. I got on the Internet and figured out how to adjust it. This reduced but did not eliminate the rubbing; it still rubs for a few minutes after I apply the front brake or after I lean too hard into a turn, but that was the best I could do. (The back brake, by comparison, has never rubbed.) On the other hand, the brakes are AWESOME! I have never felt so in control on the steep, narrow, windy roads of my neighborhood. Could I now do an easy ride starting at my house? Sadly, no. The algorithm in the power assist requires I work before it will help. Also, even at the highest assist level, it took all of my strength and all of the eAssist to make it up the steepest hill in my neighborhood, a short (0.1 mile) hill that Strava assures me has an average grade of 23%. On the other hand, I did make it up that hill in the end so having this bike means I can ride anywhere I want in my neighborhood without checking that the grades are not too steep. Still, my fear that I was going to damage this bike and my ignorance about how to do basic roadside maintenance on it were causing me to ride it less often than I might have. One silly issue was ‘what if I got a puncture?’ I knew this bike was tubeless-ready, but was it tubeless or did it have tubes? The rims were carbon. Could I use my usual tire irons and techniques to change a punctured tube? In response, I decided to avoid straying too far so that I could walk the bike home if necessary. Finally, my one complaint with Contender is that they had mounted the front tire incorrectly such that it went ‘bump bump bump’ when I rode, tolerable on the rough roads in my neighborhood but annoying the two times I took it out on my smoother New Alpine ride.

At this point, Michael and I were getting a little discouraged. Was this bike a mistake, a bike I wouldn’t ride much? I really didn’t want that to happen so I developed a Go-To ride that stayed within walking distance of my home. By riding my new bike mostly for that ride I was able to use it on a fairly regular basis. I kept thinking that I ought to just take the bike to Gebhart at my LBS and pay him to help me with it, but I felt bad I had not purchased it from him so held back until the day the rear disk brakes started making a funny noise; I worried that if I ignored that I might damage the bike. By this point, my favorite bike, my Bianchi Volpe, was so badly in need of maintenance I could no longer ride it. Finally, for a variety of reasons Gebhart had been sitting on my Bianchi Specialissima for almost two years and I wanted to nudge him about that. All of these issues together pushed me over the edge and I gave him a call. “I’d love to see your Orbea!” he said. “Bring it in.” After much work, he got the front tire reseated, no more ‘bump bump bump.’ He straightened the disk for the front disk brake. When I got the bike home, that made no difference, the amount of rubbing was the same but at least I knew it was not something stupid I had done. He said the rear brake was fine, but put a bit of lubricant on the disk to take the noise away. The lubricant accomplished that but it also reduced its stopping power. However, by the end of the first ride the lubricant was gone, the brakes worked as well as before, and the funny noise was back, but again his reassurances meant I could ignore it. Finally, he assured me I had tubes and that my existing tube changing tools and techniques would work fine. Besides reseating the front tire, Gabhart had mostly just provided reassurance but that made all the difference. He sold me a water bottle cage that looked nice on this fancy new bike, I attached my pump to the second water bottle mounts, put the seat bag with my tools and spare tube under the seat, and I now have a bike as serviceable as any I own. Gebhart also ordered me some Ultegra SPD pedals that will be more suitable for this bike. (Since then, he has also overhauled my Volpe and he is making slow but sure progress on the Specialissima.)

In many respects (cost, technology, the electric power assist) my Orbea Gain is unique among my bikes, but in other ways, it fits right in. Since acquiring the Orbea, I have ridden it 37 times (28% of my rides) for a total of just over 400 miles. Two of those rides were over my New Alpine route which allowed me to compare it to most of my other bikes. Even from my new home, this is a route I can manage on a fair number of my bikes including my 1960 Bianchi Specialissima, my 2010 Surly Cross Check, my 2007 Bianchi Volpe, and my reborn 1967 Hetchins, so when I rode it on the Orbea, I did it with the power assist turned off. With the power assist on, low gears are less important but the Orbea does have a fairly low bottom gear of 29”, almost identical to my Surly at 28” but not as low as the Volpe at 22”. By comparison, the Specialissima and the Hetchins have low gears of 46” and 44” respectively, unimpressive low gears which are nonetheless adequate for the New Alpine route. Presumably the gravel bike from which the Gain is derived is quite light, but once you add a battery and motor, the Gain itself comes in at a hefty 29 pounds, only exceeded by the Surly at 30 pounds. The lightweights are the Specialissima and Hetchins at 24 and 25 pounds respectively leaving the Volpe in the middle at 27 pounds. (Given how overweight I am, the weight of the bike is probably pretty unimportant.) Is there something magic about the Orbea that, despite its weight, would make it especially fast? It would seem not, its speed on the two New Alpine rides was comparable to rides on the Volpe or Cross Check ridden a few days before or after.

I have already confessed that as wonderful as my new Orbea Gain is, it did not give me the easy ride for which I have been yearning*. In compensation, it opened up a new Go-To ride for me, one with some unique advantages (which I will discuss in a future post). It also allows me to keep up with my son Michael, either when it is just him on his non-electric road bike or when he is on his cargo eBike with his two kids. Finally, the Orbea has allowed me to try out the latest bicycle technology. The most important difference between my Orbea and the rest of my bikes is the electric assist feature which is absolutely game changing, but here I want to consider its other modern features. I have already commented on the hydraulic disk brakes, one of my favorite features of this bike. The electronic shifting is impressive indeed! It is stunning to shift the gears and hear the derailleurs adjust themselves to a perfect position. One thing I find slightly annoying about the index shifting on my Surly and my Volpe are that I cannot ‘tune’ the shifting like I can on my Specialissima and my Hetchins and so occasionally, in some gears, the derailleurs are positioned slightly suboptimally. The Orbea provides the best of both, the convenience of indexed shifting while providing an automated tuning to optimize derailleur position. As impressive as I find this, I have to say it is not game changing; neither the index shifting of my Volpe and Surly nor the manual shifting of my Hetchins and Specialissima bother me all that much. While it is true that the Orbea most definitely has the best shifting of all my bikes, it’s just that it does not make all that big a difference to me. There is something absurd about this bike in that it is constructed largely of lightweight carbon fiber, an advantage that is more than offset by its battery and motor. I can’t say that I find the ride experience of carbon all that different from the rest of my bikes, all of which have steel frames. The difference in ride quality between my Surly (which I like less) and my Volpe (which I like more) is vastly greater than any difference I feel with the Orbea. Finally, I want to talk about one component on this bike that surprised me the most: the saddle. I am a huge fan of old school Brooks leather saddles which I have on my Volpe, Hetchins, and Specialissima. By comparison, the more modern plastic saddle that came with my Surly is barely tolerable (though it is better than any other plastic saddle I had tried up until now.) Thus, I wondered what I was going to do about the plastic Fizik Aliante R5 saddle that came with the Orbea. The good news was that, because the Orbea is a gravel bike, the saddle was not as terrifyingly narrow as those found on most modern road bikes, but a Brooks it was not. Putting a Brooks on this bike didn’t seem like an option. Brooks saddles require long offset seatposts which are not compatible with the Orbea. I was thinking about some more modern leather saddles that do not require a special seatpost but figured I’d first give the Fizik a try. It felt hard compared to my Brooks saddles, but when I took the bike out on the longer New Alpine ride, I found that although this saddle felt a little less cushy at first, it didn’t become less comfortable with time the way the Surly saddle did; it was fine. Now that I am more comfortable taking the Orbea out on the road, I am eager to try this saddle on some even longer rides. In summary, although this clearly was not my most cost effective bicycle purchase, I am glad I have it and for me it was definitely worth the money.


* As I will detail in a future post, I ended up solving the ‘easy ride’ problem by setting up my trainer to be used for such rides.