No FX - Punk in Drublic with an Electric Dirtbike

Some of the benefits of having an electric motorcycle are reduced maintenance, tons of torque and about as much noise at full throttle as a cordless drill. I have found the last of these to be my favorite. 

Back when my bike was fairly new and I hadn't taken it off-road much, I decided to take it to the park across the street. The park had a sweet staircase, storm drains, tight single track through trees and a baseball diamond with a nice pitcher's mound that you could get some air off of, if you hit it with enough speed. Now, I would never do anything to put other people in danger, so I made sure no one was around and proceeded to mess around a little bit. 

I got the idea in my head to try to hit the pitcher's mound, hit the brakes and drift behind the backstop. Everything went fine until the drifting part. I expected the back tire to stay at a reasonable speed, but instead it spooled up like a bat outta hell. I quickly found myself on my back, my lungs devoid of air, with dust swirling above me and my bike on its side. 

What I had just discovered about the electric bike was that, as soon as the rear tire breaks loose, it wants to spin as fast is it can. With no gears and a top speed of 140 km/h, it is definitely something that requires getting used to. 

Lying on the ground, I expected people off in the distance to come to my aid, because surely they had heard the whole debacle. Instead, nothing. No one had noticed. Not the people in the distance, not even the ducks watching and probably laughing at me a stone's throw away. 

At first I was pissed because I had dropped my almost-new bike and winded myself to boot. But amidst the silence, once I was able to breathe, all I could do was laugh. Never before have I wiped out and had everything carry on like nothing happened. It was like I wasn't even there. After wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes, I picked up my bike, got the chunks of dirt out of it, gave my head a good shake, and continued to play around some more before making my way home. 

There have been more off-road antics with the bike since then, but that was the first time it caught me off guard. I can only imagine how absurd the whole thing would have looked to someone if they had seen me wipeout, make a bunch of weird noises on my back, then laugh my ass off and go home. Nevertheless, I really appreciate being able to take my motorcycle out and hit a couple of doubles without any of the neighbors coming out to yell and shake sticks at me.