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BIG BATTERIES ARE AWESOME! Electric unicycles are awesome! ACM is awesome! Night rides are awesome! Did a 57km, over 6 hour (including breaks), mostly unplanned ride.
Here's the story:
So yesterday, after mignight, it was so hot I spontaneously decided to do a short night ride to cool off. Well, not so short as I went for a scenic church on a foothill at the base of the mountains, 15km from and 350m above home. This one (pic from Wikipedia):
Mountains where you see them (and to the left), valley to the right of what's in the picture, 350m below you, great views!
Being 1am, it was dark night though (so not too many photos here, and a lot of text). Only the ACM's meek light to see the ground before you when there were no street lights or other illumination.
The first theme of the ride (in hindsight) is, "Wait, is this path getting even worse?". First started when, after riding through empty streets, doing a small detour along a lake. The path quickly went from farm road to overgrown footpath to dodging and curving around trees and their roots on wavy terrain (as well as collecting surprisingly many spiderwebs with my face), with the lake and whatever canals to the sides. You can't see them, but you hear there's water when a frog jumps into safety or there's a little splash here and there. But with an electric unicycle, easily done, and fun.
After a while, I reached paved roads again. On it went, on deserted streets, through fields, or right through villages, nobody to be seen. Night rides have their special quality! And it was nice and cool.
Upon reaching the base of the mountain, my personal new hobby began: worrying about my motor cabling and the current produced. Inclines were quite steep, 15% in many places, 20A says the specification, 30A or 40A says the wheel when going up. Oh well! This can be done by doing breaks every few minutes, to prevent possible overheating. Took very many screenshots of the Wheellog current chart on the way up [more about that topic some other time]. Besides this, the rest of the ride uphill was fantastic, through pitch black forest, through meadows with the lights of the valley below you, passing neat farm settlements along the path up. On a nice, smooth road.
Finally reached the destination, on the ridge of the hill. The church is on a small elevation above the street, a big tree next to it, with a bench under its branches. Great views of the valley, lights of the villages and Autobahn laid out before you, the faint silhouettes of the mountains behind you in the dark. Unfortunately, neither my phone nor the old camcorder I took with me could make a decent picture (the latter gives you nightvision pictures though).
Phone pic of the view.
Same view. Camcorder pic of the lights in the valley. Well some of them.
I expected the church to be spot-lighted as it usually is, but it was not. Second theme of the ride reared its head: "This is more creepy than I expected!". Very dark, cold wind from the mountains, and as customary, a cemetary with the church. The entrance being a few steps behind the bench I sat on. While my naked eye could see nothing besides a tiny candle in there, thanks to the flash, here are some official creepy-vision pictures for your enjoyment.
With ACM, of course.
Phone pic with flash. These are the kind of pictures where you photograph into the darkness, and expect some undead staring back at you once you look at them later. Fortunately, didn't happen
Relaxing in the dark.
After some time trying (and failing) to get decent pictures of the lights in the night, I continued on. It was 2:30 am at the time.
Being on a ridge, I rode the road along it, to a small chapel with a view similar to the church. Didn't stay long as the wind was howling there and there were people not to be disturbed, so no pictures. If you're wondering, there are a ton of churches, chapels, shrines in the area; typical for rural Bavarian areas.
Back along the ridge, passing the church, I decided to descend another side of the hill. I started to use my phone for navigation. This was meant mainly to prevent going on the main roads as much as possible (though in hindsight, there was barely any traffic to be seen, maybe 2 or 3 cars altogether).
So on it went, downhills, descending through meadows and neat little farms and villages. All nice, wide paved roads. After branching from the main road, the route became increasingly side-path-y, smaller roads, more curves, until suddenly the pavement ended and I was on a farm road. And there was a fork. The navigation told me to go right, but it turned out the path ended at some trees, with only a narrow breach, overgrown with tall grass, to follow through a forest. Too much to decently ride, even with a EUC. So back to the fork, and going the other way. Surely, this had to be a better way forward.
And better it was, though it would still hold some surprises (theme #1). The path went downhill steeper and steeper, through parts of forests and between steep meadowy hillsides. And always little to be seen besides the sky, the lights of the valley in the distance, and the trusty ACM's light cone to illuminate what's coming. Very much fun!
Creepytime came again when I heard unexpected movement to the sides. Just some cows I woke up, though. Sorry, cows!
Cows, plus valley lights in the distance.
Then the narrow path got even steeper, and I did breaks every few minutes again, just to be sure my cabling stayed healthy. It was broken up concrete plates by now, overgrown with grass, and some deep cracks and potholes for extra challenge. And even steeper it became. Way too steep to turn around without having to carry the wheel up. Looking it up afterwards, it was up to 25% inclines. For a EUC, this is a lot. Even downhills.
Right when the end of the last and craziest piece of incline could be seen, I underestimated an extra big crack, and gave some new battle scars to my mostly pristine ACM. Oh well...
Anyways, finally I arrived at more level ground again. No more breaks necessary. But extra super creepytime. Picture this: an old farm in the pitch black dark, a loud dripping (?) sound seeming to come closer everytime you look in another direction, lots of scary looking sharp farm equipment, right out of a horror movie. And a Jesus statue, looking down at you. Took some photos by the light of the ACM and phone flash.
Drip drip drip drip drip..... in the darkness.
It's just a small, remote mountain farm, but not looking that harmless at night.
Shed in the darkness, valley lights still some way below. Also, in the photo it looks like a EUC is leaning there Ninebot?
Hey Jesus, how are you! To the right, steep incline I descended from. On the left, the path forward, only slightly inclined downwards.
The path onwards was farm road, narrow but easily ridable. Here's a decent picture from a short part where it actually went up, to pass an old little farm. With another (creepy?) Jesus statue and chapel, naturally. I did not stop for a picture as not to possibly wake up the people there, it was still around 4am.
You can see it's still quite steep on both sides of the path.
It got steeper and broken-up concrete road again, so narrow and steep I was wondering if they could even drive a normal car up to their house. Then some sudden rustling. Some more cows to the side! They didn't seem to be bothered too much by me stopping and photographing, but when I put on my backpack again, that must have sounded like I was taking something out of it. All the cows came. In doubt, animals always want one thing from you: food
You can always see the lights of the valley in the background. I had a fantastic view for the entire time (unless when in a piece of forest), the valley, the mountains in front of the sky, just an amazing atmosphere to ride in
Some time later, passing another farm, it got creepy and funny at the same time. Sheep. Lots of them. And they got loud. Did you know, in the black darkness, sheep sound surprisingly human-like? Spooky! They all came when I stopped (take a guess what they hoped for). I quickly took a picture of the sheep/extraterrestials disguising themselves as sheep (look at them, you never know) and went on. They got so loud I was scared they'd wake up the entire farm (still pitch black night), thus the hurry. Left behind some clearly disappointed sounding sheep when I continued.
Sheep, or Aliens? You decide.
Some more descending, and it looked like I was almost down. Paved roads! Here's a shed along the way. As you can see, the sky finally got a little bright. Around 4:30 am.
Reaching the base of the mountain, crossing the main road, I did a little break at a swimming lake next to the river. The weather was a bit too cold for swimming though, so I didn't (did that on some earlier night ride though, was fantastic!).
ACM at the lake in the dawn.
I continued towards home on the dam along the river, and it got brighter and brighter quite fast. It is summer, after all.
These pictures are around 5am.
Cute tiny trailer.
No more pictures from the way home, as nothing much special happened and my phone battery was near 0%. It was mainly an issue of getting the 10 to 15 km home. But the ACM to the rescue, thanks to its USB port! Tip: always take your charging cable with you! Initially I wanted to make a stop for recharging the phone, until I realized I can do that without stopping.
This photo was actually made by accident but this is how I continued.
Being freed of the phone battery constraint (worried to lose my GPS track that was still recording), and not having had enough EUC riding yet, I decided to make as many detours as I could before the wheel would start beeping at me due to low battery.
One of the detours, a short dead end in the forest, gave some more small battle scars to my ACM, and bent my phone's cable. Thanks to something hidden in the high grass. The ACM's USB port was not damaged though. Very sturdy little machine.
Picture from today.
I continued on, doing whatever detours came to mind, draining the battery. It's surprising at what comparably little stresses the wheel beeps at you with low battery. In the end, I had to go 15 km/h or less to prevent beeping at every small obstacle, hill, or acceleration.
Finally, at 7 am, 6 hours and 15 minutes after I had left, I was home again. Tired but very happy.
Not a single time did I worry about my battery status or not getting home, as I knew the ACM had plenty of juice left. I did not even start with a full wheel, probably at 85 or 90%. 57 km ridden, in what was initially meant to be a 2 or 3 hour ride.
BIG BATTERIES ARE AWESOME!
Here's the track. With time and distance ridden Start at the red Cyrillic letter and go clockwise.
That's the end of the story. Hope you enjoyed. And learned something: in doubt, always go for the bigger battery. Absolutely worth it!
Really, so bad? But I doubt the bank thing is related to this, it hasn't cost them money (yet). Nobody here wants to see Gotway go down, just safer wheels.
