Unboxing and Testing Two Surprise Mountain Bikes!

Welcome to another episode of Berm Peak Express, and today we're doing something a little different, but kind of the same because we're doing something with bikes. I have the bikes out of the boxes. They're charging because these are e-bikes. They have batteries, they have motors, so if you've seen the kind of e-bikes that the delivery driver comes up on, that nerdy contraption with all sorts of wires and batteries hanging off of it, these are nothing like that. These are super rad e-mountain bikes, and this particular bike is made by Haibike. This is a sister company of Diamondback, but neither of these bikes are for me. First, Johnny. What's up, guys? This is Johnny from Crafted Workshop. It's another YouTube channel. Johnny has helped us countless times with so many different things, so I'm glad to be able to help him out today and get him on an e-bike, and the reason that I want to get Johnny on an e-bike is that we electric skateboard together all the time, and it's super fun. We're going the same speed. The boards go the same speed. We can shred around country roads and just be together and hang out, and on a mountain bike, we don't have the same experience. Yeah, I am not the most cardiovascularly fit person. I love mountain biking, but usually the problem I run into is, especially around here, out of the truck, it's like a 30-minute climb immediately. I'm totally gassed by the time we get to the top, and then one run downhill, and I'm pretty much shot. And we want to do more laps. Yeah, for sure. So, what I'm thinking is, we can get Johnny on an e-bike, shake it down here, figure it out, make sure everything is working properly, and then another day, we can go to an e-bike legal trail system, see who gets worn out first. I think I know who it's going to be. Probably going to be me. Now, I said I had two e-bikes. The other one is for Curtis, my producer, because he's got to lug around all the camera gear, so when we finally do go to this trail system, he's not going to have a prayer carrying all this stuff to the top of the mountain. Let's get this thing put together and set up for you. Sweet. Let's do it. So the thing with this type of e-bike is, if you've ridden a normal bike, riding this e-bike is exactly the same. You just get on it and pedal, and what it does is, it adds to your power. So there's a motor right here, right on the cranks, and it senses how hard you're pushing on the cranks, and it assists you accordingly. So when you go to climb a hill, and you're pushing, and you're digging deep, it gives you that little extra. When you're going down a hill, it doesn't assist you at all. Johnny, you've never tried an e-bike before. Never. So the sensation is freaky. It would convince you that you're stronger. That's what I'm hoping. Yeah. First thing I've got to do is just stick the seat post in here, so we can get it up on the stand. It's a beast. So when we visited Park Tool Company, they had a bike stand that was an electric lift. So it goes down on the ground, you clamp it, you press a button, and the lift goes right back up. And I said, this is a serious luxury item. And they said, no. In Europe, there are laws like lifting restrictions, and with e-bikes, you need two mechanics there to legally lift the e-bike onto the stand. It enables a shop to run with one mechanic legally. Guys, this thing right here, the dork disc. It's known as a dork disc because it rattles around and makes noise, and everybody just takes it off. They're so annoying to remove, too. The reason it's illegal to sell a bike at a bike shop without a dork disc is that if your limit screws are not set properly or your derailleur hanger's bent, your chain can go into the spokes, and it can cause the rear wheel to lock up, thereby possibly causing a crash. In my experience, that's not what happens. It just completely destroys the drivetrain. And also in my experience, the dork disc doesn't really stop it from happening. Yeah. We're going to take her off. If you have a cassette tool, pretty easy. Just hold on to the cassette, crack her loose. They did a good job greasing all this stuff from the factory. And that's it. The dork disc is off. A lot easier than trying to snap it off and get it around the cassette, which is what I usually do. So we're hooked up. Oh, now it's nice and smooth. No crazy noises. That's so awesome. Okay. Let's put the rest of this bike together. We got to put handlebars up here. I must say, I'm impressed with their cable tidiness right there. Yeah, the cables are nice and tidy. Here I am putting together this e-bike. There's no learning curve. There's nothing I'm doing that's different than putting together a normal bike. So Curtis's bike is not as high end, but it's pretty freaking sweet. It's got the same battery. It's got the same motor. It just doesn't have as kind of crazy components. And for a bike to lug stuff around, it's honestly overkill. You could hit jumps and do whatever you want on this bike. You could ride park on it. Somehow it took me like, I don't know, what, an hour to put together your bike and it took me six and a half minutes to put together Curtis's. So this is your battery. There we go. Comes off. It goes in like that. Yeah, yeah. It goes like that. Now she's locked in. That turns it on. Eco. Standard. And high. Full chooch. Oh. And then, whoa. And then like warp speed. Yeah. So I'm going to put in Curtis's battery and we're going to get to it. Do you want to do the honors right here? Oh, yeah. Eco. Standard. Fast. Warp speed. Wait. You don't have a warp. Oh, only Johnny's got a warp speed. Ooh. Okay. All right, guys. We got a long hill over here. Just burn in the brakes. Flip them on. Come back up. Of course it starts raining as soon as we want to go outside. All right. What power wattage are you using? I guess we'll start with eco, I guess. All right. Here we go. Holy crap. Dude. Oh, nice. That's just. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my God. Oh, I can do this. Oh, yeah. I'm a freaking tour de France champion right now. Oh, my God. I got to shift up. You know how much pain Alex and I were in coming up this hill? Oh, my God. Thank you, Seth. And high bike. Dude. What do you think? This is my kind of bike. This is exercise right here. Oh, and it just so smoothly goes away when you don't need it. I'm not even winded. You guys aren't winded at all. I'm dead when I come up that hill. I didn't even do anything. Does it feel freaky? It's weird, but like very natural. You know? Yeah. You just feel like you're in shape. Yeah. Hey, I want to see if you can pedal up this trail over here. Oh, man. Here go right down. Knob deep. To the right? You don't want to go left. Yeah, I know. I don't think so. Whoa. Taking down road entrance. Freaking carnage over there. The e-bike can only help so much. I'm curious to see if you guys can come back up this. Holy. Oh, God. The ship. All right. Let's see if Johnny will clear it. Dude. Oh, my God. Legit. Go. That is unbelievable. Oh. The route. The route done got me. I want to know if you can get up this hill. Why don't you start back there? For somebody who's never mountain biked like Curtis, this is quite the trial by fire, e-bike or not, man. Oh, mama. You got it, bud. I have faith in Curtis. Oh. You can just start pedaling right there on this hill? It's freaking insane. I mean, like. That is nutty. Oh. I'm done. You're going to get it. All right. So it looks like we got these e-bikes up and running. How about Johnny and I go up there? I'm going to grab my hardtail. We'll drop in off the flight deck and actually go for a proper ride here. So let's work our way down Berm Peak all the way to the bottom to the gravel road and we'll see what you can ride, what you can't, but we'll see what happens. All right. Dropping. Oh. Slippery. What a way to start. Whoa. You all right? It was really slippery. Slippery. I'm going to go back up and try it again. You're crazy, bud. Well, it's farther than I expected. Not bad. You want to try again? Probably not. Maybe not today. All right. Well, we got plenty more gnar. Johnny's going to try and just roll through here and just go over this. He's not going to do any gap jumps, especially not his first day on his bike. I mean, let's see how it goes. You got it. Yeah. I'm impressed. Let's make this interesting. So this is going to be really steep. I'll show you the line to take. I'm going to show you the line to take. It's too wet. Too wet. So I'll show you how to get in on the other side, and it's going to be awesome. Guys, I'm so sorry for these breaks. Okay. So you're just going to come in here. Good Lord. This is steep as hell. Good technique. He was behind the seat. That was like perfect technique. I would use that to teach people how to go down a steep skidder line. That was great. This is not possible. on the e-bike. Do you want to try? I mean, sure. I don't think I could pedal up this. So I'm interested to see how this works out. I would bump it up to the highest power and see what happens. You might have to go wide. I'm going to try it on my hardtail. I'm going to try it on an e-bike and see if I do any better. Full power. This is ridiculous. This is insane. Oh my God. It's a huge difference. Proof is in the pudding. All right. Let's continue downhill. So, you know, after we make this right turn, it's 36% grade for like 100 yards. You son of... Oh my God. So obviously Johnny really murdered me on that uphill. We just eaten. Even had a little gag reflex action. But this bike is like 50 pounds and you can't always pedal every climb. Sometimes you have to hike. In that situation, Johnny would have to push a 50 pound bike up the hill while I have my nice light hardtail. I can just sling it over my shoulder. So the rest of it's a hike-a-bike. Woo-hoo. 25 pound bike. Woo-hoo-hoo. All right. If I push my pedal... Oh no, dude. You're losing. I'm pushing my pedal with my hand. What? Get out of here. No way. Hiking is easier too. Here I'm thinking that he's going to... I'm going to make him push a 50 pound bike up the hill. And he just... He pushes the pedal with his hands and the bike propels itself up the hill. Do e-bikers ever lose? Let me try this thing. What the freaking... What is this thing all about? Oh my God. It laid down so much torque. I got to see how this thing jumps. Boom. That's pretty cool. You know, actually because of the extra weight, it makes the jumping feel extra gnarly. Like you're on a moto. Like the bike itself actually contributes to compressing the suspension. And throwing the bike around, I could see riding a jump trail would get really tiring. You win the whole way up, but the whole way down, you got to throw this bike around. There are pros and cons for sure. So we did a couple hours of just riding around here and the battery is still completely full. Totally 100% understand why people hate e-bikers. You get your friend out who never climbs and they just blow right past you and so people are going to be butt hurt. It's amazing. Like I don't even feel tired at all. That's what I want. I want to be able to go out and ride for a full day. I'm excited to get out to an e-bike legal trail system with you and get stronger because I'm going to want to be keeping up with you. It's really tempting to go this route, but I like being able to flick my bike around. I like the lightness. I think e-bikes have a little ways to go before I would think it was no question. And of course, just the politics in the East Coast of the United States, they're not allowed everywhere. So I think it's a great like additional bike to have, you know, like if you're a dude like me who just doesn't have the time to go be like super, super fit, you can still have a regular bike that you can go on any trail with, but then have an e-bike for those days where you have eight hours to go ride. It would be amazing for that. One thing I will say is it's no replacement for bike skills. Anybody who's afraid of e-bikes because they think people are going to be whizzing through the trails at 40 miles an hour makes you stronger, does not make you faster. There's no way. Especially downhill. I mean, like all these technical descents, like I didn't use the e-bike functionality at all. Well, I hope you enjoyed it because I'm banning e-bikes on Berm Peak. They're not allowed here. Never come back. All right. So I might've jumped the gun with the whole banning e-bikes on Berm Peak, decided that if you want to ride here, it's no problem as long as you pay the toll. You ready? All right. Oh yeah. Oh, I can't believe it. This is insane. That is so crazy. I can't believe you're actually just pulling me up the hill. I hope you guys enjoyed our e-bike misadventures. We do live in a temperate rainforest. It was a little wet out today. Check out Johnny's channel. He does woodworking. He shows you how to do it. Really cool, unique stuff. And if you want to see more on this e-bike, we're going to be going to an e-bike friendly trail system and actually going for a ride soon. So make sure you subscribe so you get the notification when that video comes. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks for riding with me today and I'll see you next time. I got to admit, it's really fun. It's really, really fun. I get what all the fuss is about, but I'm going to hold onto my analog bike for a little longer. It's the same pattern with everything else in America. If you have enough money, you can do anything. Somebody can work their entire lives to climb really fast, but if you have enough money, you can climb just as fast as they can.