Current Mobility:

Riding the Future Today.The Brammo Enertia

This “report”, “review”, “random flow of words” or whatever you want to call it was originallygoing to be titled: my

WEEKEND w/ ENERTIE

. It was going to parallel and draw plot points from that 80’s classic movie, “Weekend at Bernie’s”, while at the same time I discussedmy time with the Brammo Enertia. I decided against that idea because:1)

My time with the Brammo Enertia was much more than a weekend. 21 days and growingas of 12/1/2011.2)

The name Enertie is just horrid and I didn’t want to saddle such a fine machine with suchan awful name.3)

I realized it was a silly idea at best. At worst? Well we won’t mention that in such politecompany as this.

Some Background:

How did a fifty year old Pediatric Sonographer living in Albuquerque, NM get a long- termtest ride of an electric motorcycle from a small company located in Ashland, Oregon?Well if you ask the nice people over at Brammo Owners Forum (a fan site not officiallyconnected to Brammo:http://brammoforum.com/

) they will likely say, “With a lot of Whining”.I instead say, “With an intelligent, persuasive barrage of logic…and some

mild

whining.”It actually started when I realized I had a true south facing, slightly tilted roof on my house. Ialso live at 5300 feet and we have 310 sunny days a year. Strong, beautiful sun beats down onthat roof almost everyday. It seemed a crime to not harvest that energy in some way. So I addedsolar panels to my roof.At that point I realized I could actually use that energy to decrease our household dependenceon gas and oil. So I started looking at electric cars. That also led to looking at electricmotorcycles (again, 310 sunny days and a 5.2 mile commute to work each way = plenty of daysto bicycle to work in the summer and scooter to work the rest of the year).Long, LONG story short (I ordered my first electric car in Feb 2008 and I still don’t own anelectric vehicle): I pre-ordered a Brammo Enertia Plus, joined the Brammo Owners Forum whereI learned tons of information about EVs and posted way too many times and became just aweeeee bit obsessive about owning an electric vehicle (and learned to write run-onsentences…eh, who am I kidding…I’ve been writing horrid run-on and on sentences and crazysentence fragments since the first time I could write).After a few e-mails back and forth with the nice people at Brammo (www.Brammo.com),including Facebook, Twitter and various other modern ways to cyber-stalk a company, AdrianStewart (Director of Sales and Marketing at Brammo) asked me if I wanted to test drive anEnertia. I mentioned the distance from Ashland to Albuquerque and politely inquired as to lengthof said test ride. A few more emails and the very intelligent people at Brammo decided that itwas safer to keep me in Albuquerque than have my stalking move further west. And so anEnertia was boxed up tight and shipped to the beautiful Southwest. And thus began my littleadventure.

But enough

Background

as this really isn’t about me (my wife is reading over my shoulder and just walked away laughing and mumbling something that sounded a lot like “Ha, Gavin it’salways about you”, but I must have misheard her.)

The Arrival:

After a few obstacles (bike needed to be registered, bike needed plates…and most likely people “above” Mr. Stewart needed to be convinced I wasn’t going to get bike and make my way35 miles at a time toward the Mexican border), I received the email I was waiting for:“November 3, 2011: Enertia is registered and shipping today!”After a painful weekend of the bike sitting in Fresno, CA for 3 freakin’ days, the bike slowlymoved east and arrived in Albuquerque at 3:22 pm on Wednesday, November 9. And yes, I leftwork early so I could be there when SHE arrived. And yes, all my rides are female in my mind.It is not sexist. I just think of beautiful things as “she”s and smelly things that sit and watch toomuch football with Cheetos stains on t-shirt and hand down pants as “he”s…is that so wrong?Even though I was tracking the shipment hourly like Norad tracks Santa each Christmas, Iwasn’t sure this would really happen until the box arrived. Heck, even then I thought the boxwould be empty with just a note saying, “Got Ya”. After all, why would this start-up companysend ME a lovely bike to abuse…I mean drive very very carefully? But then I realized it reallywas happening as the ONE delivery man attempt to move the large, heavy box all by his self.And I also realized just how lucky I was to get this opportunity.After watching the poor delivery guy nearly kill himself and then nearly tip the box over to anasty 4 foot drop out of truck, I decide to give him a hand…literally a hand as my left wrist wasstill in a brace from my non-displaced fracture of the distal Ulna styloid process.* My first broken bone in 50 years of living….and since it was non-displaced I don’t really count it as afracture anyways. Luckily I had talked the ER into a brace instead of a cast as I knew the Enertiawas coming and riding in a cast would raise a few eyebrows. But a nice black brace looksamazingly like protective riding gear



Poor box ripped from stem to stern…gutted like a fish…what other colorful phrases can we add here?

So somehow the bike safely makes it from truck to nice and safe level ground. The cardboardis dented to heck and torn in a couple of places, but I peek through the hole and the bike looks perfect and intact. And then came my first post-delivery discovery about Brammo……Brammo LOVES metal screws. Brammo likely has stock in some metal screw company.Either that or Brammo is mildly sadistic. OMG, 30 minutes later and I’m finally removing thefinal screw that holds cardboard to metal frame. I want to get at the bike so badly and each littlescrew is taunting me…but I had promised to keep the box and frame nice and intact for when Ireturn the Enertia to Brammo. Without that promise cardboard ripping would have commencedimmediately and with

Great Gusto

. This, strangely enough, was the name of one of my GreatUncles. With a name like

that,

one might think, “Circus performer?” Nope, just an Accountant.

First peek at bike. Beautiful. Damn you metal screws…I want to sit on her NOW.

Finally, cardboard is removed and bike is bare for the world to see. First impression is thatshe is a beautiful and well put together motorcycle. A REAL motorcycle and not some DIY project bike. This is a theme that will be repeated many times over the course of many days andwith many other motorcyclists. Most think of electric as either cheap or unfinished in quality.Everyone is surprised at just how well the Enertia is put together. The repeated comment is:“Wow, that is a real motorcycle.” To which I reply, “Yeah, that is what Brammo wanted tomake. A real motorcycle that just happens to run on electricity instead of gas.”