As I pedaled up to the N. Eldon Tanner Building I noticed that the bike racks on the south side were full and I was fortunate to find and cable-on at the last available slot. I had come to chat with Gove and Nickie Allen about their e-bike experience, a rather recent and exciting event in their lives I soon found out. Gove, Associate Professor of Information Systems, has been consistently e-biking to work this year, as well as taking the stairway instead of the elevator from his office on the sixth floor of BYU’s Marriott School of Business. Nickie began her biking ventures earlier when in 2019 she visited Stockholm, Sweden on a student study program and was amazed to see the city’s extensive bicycle infrastructure. There were “stop lights just for bikes” and well maintained bikeways heavily populated with thriving urban cyclists.
The Allens had bought an e-bike to get around town while they were doing some traveling on the East Coast in a motorhome. It made things much easier in picking up groceries along the way and for sightseeing as they traveled about from city to city. Around the same time, while Nickie was attending a class in Health & Wellness, they took an interest in personal health improvement. She had a class assignment which challenged the students to take-on something new and difficult, and she chose to bike to class that semester along the steep south campus pathway off 800 North. Gove, a rather tall person, then lost around a hundred pounds of weight as their interest in health expanded and a plant based diet (with no meat) was added to the Allens’ lifestyle. Next, they bought another e-bike to match the Trek Allant they already had and began riding more often instead of driving. Gove rides to his office daily, a two mile distance covered in six minutes, and he can actually “make it to work sooner than it used to take him [driving in his car],” he tells me with some satisfaction in his voice.
Nickie had been reading about countries around the world that were turning their cities into bike-friendly places, so she began doing the family’s shopping at Costco, Sam’s Club, and Sprouts and even biking to doctor’s appointments (something done casually in Stockholm). To make things easier and to carry larger loads Gove and Nickie purchased a bike trailer for a child and now pack their groceries home safely in this weather-proof cart. They can haul up to fifty pounds of goods. A few of her routes aren’t so comfortable, though, such as South University Avenue and the bridge over the railroad tracks. But Nickie brightens as she tells me how much she likes “being out on a bike while the sun’s out… and I’m out in the world and it’s beautiful… on my bike and I’m smiling.” Gove and Nickie Allen have more biking plans ahead, they would someday like to e-bike from city to city throughout the State of Utah. And there’s no doubt they’ll do it.
