Dave at Surly broke his leg kinda bad and pieced this little motorized marvel together:
One of the best things about working for a bike company is having the machines and scraps at hand to slap things like this together in a jiffy. Ride-my-damned-bike-at-any-cost Dave had this to say:
For some reason, on my ride home, my left-side pedal threads (the side of my good leg) started to strip out when I was about 5km from home. I knew it was beyond repair and I couldn’t do anything to tighten up the thread interface, so I pedaled softly and utilized the motor-assist as much as possible. The pedal finally parted from the crank arm about 2km from home. Luckily, I still had enough juice in the battery to get me home. The sight of me riding the monstrosity with my left leg resting behind me on the FreeRad (to keep it out of the way of the spinning crank…sans pedal) and my right leg in a knee-high black plastic cast lightly pedaling while the motor pushed me along at 25kph, provoked some puzzled and concerned looks from the coffin jockeys driving around me. It’s good to be the unknown quantity. I think it generally affords me a little more room on the road.
