Canada Is a Handshake: Two Albertans, $5,000, and 1,000 Miles of Proof
Gold Bar Park, Edmonton, August 2026. A thousand miles into a promise. Still from the video Russ and Kim made for us.
Looking for a real Meet One trike review? Here is one with 1,000 miles behind it. Russ, an Edmonton rider, ordered a Meet One Tour 2.0 dual-motor trike in April 2026, waited two months for the ship, and reported on camera in August: no issues, no complaints, hills he used to struggle with now climbed smiling. Both of his videos are embedded below, unedited. But the review is the smallest thing in this story — and the story starts a full year before the trike arrived. More options live in our electric trike collection.
This piece is built from the primary record: nine recorded phone calls on Zeus's lines between June 2025 and June 2026, the text-message thread from order week, and the two public YouTube videos Russ and Kim filmed and sent to us for this series. Every quotation was checked against two independent transcriptions of the actual audio — where the two engines disagreed on a word, the line was cut or trimmed to what both confirm. Names are first names only. Nothing here is a paid placement, and Russ was not compensated for his videos.
In this story
“I’m Not Talking to a Machine”
On August 28, 2026, a three-and-a-half-minute video appeared on a small YouTube channel out of Edmonton: an older man with a long white beard, standing beside a bright orange trike at Gold Bar Park, a thousand miles behind him by his own count. Videos like that decide reputations now — one rider’s recorded experience carries more weight than anything a store says about itself. So we went back through a year of recorded calls to check his story against our own records, and found something better than a review. This is that story, told from the tape.
The money part starts on a Friday in April. The story starts the summer before — but the April call is where I want you to come in. The phone rings in Brantford, Ontario, and a voice from Edmonton opens with:
Russ. He had two questions. Do we ship to Alberta? Do we take e-transfer? Yes and yes. His answer, in full: “Okay. Then we’re in business.”
Three sentences into a phone call, a man in Edmonton had decided to trust us with five thousand dollars. It took me longer than that to trust the call was real.
A Friend at That Age
Russ is the rider: e-bikes since 2017, a bike racer in his younger years, a bike-shop hand, ten years on a motorcycle, and an old-school fisherman — his phrase — who lives a few blocks from his groceries and rode a mobility scooter through Edmonton winters. He has a disability, which he talks about without ceremony. On a call the year before, trying a friend’s recumbent, he put it simply: with the disability he has, pedalling forward instead of down was just easier.
Kim is the friend. He is younger, a former professional mountain-bike racer — Russ’s telling, delivered with an audible grin — who is, again per Russ, “as good as any bike mechanic in town.” Kim films the videos, does the wrenching, and owns the house the trike ships to, because Russ lives in an apartment. In summer they fly remote-control planes with 84-inch wingspans. In June 2025, a full year before the trike arrived, the two of them called us on speakerphone about a recumbent trike — they had been watching one of our YouTube test rides when I called back, and recognized the voice. Russ’s self-description from that call: “we’re a couple of old farts.”
The whole kit: backrest seat, rear cargo box — and fishing rods strapped to the lid. An old-school fisherman’s trike.
Somewhere in those years there is a moment that explains everything that follows. Russ told it to me flat. No build-up, no moral. Years ago, Kim looked at him and said: because of your injury, because of your disability, I’m going to buy you a motor for your pedal bike. And he did — a gas motor, bolted to Russ’s bicycle, so his friend could keep up.
$5,000 to a Voice Half a Country Away
On Friday, April 10, Russ sent the deposit for the orange dual-motor Tour 2.0: $5,000, on a bike he had never touched, to a company he knew as a voice on the phone and some YouTube videos, with the GST to follow. No escrow. No card protections. An e-transfer is a handshake — once accepted, it is done.
By Monday it had gone wrong. The transfer wasn’t showing on our end. On the Monday call you can hear two decent parties each quietly wondering whether the other is the crook — me saying, on tape, that something was “sounding a bit fishy”, and from the Edmonton end of the line, at the bank, the worst sentence in Canadian retail: “The money’s gone.”
It would have been the easiest moment in the world for trust to die. Instead, both sides assumed good faith and kept working the problem. The transfer had gone astray to a misremembered address; by that evening Russ had it sorted and sent again. At 9:38 that night, his text arrived — six words I think about more than any marketing document I have ever read:
The security answer protecting his $5,000, after the scariest afternoon of the whole deal, was my first name. A stranger’s first name, used the way you’d use it across a fence.
Eight days later, with direct-to-Edmonton shipping arranged, I called with good news and a warning: once I pay the manufacturer, I can’t pull the money back, so tell me now if you have any doubt. His reply: “You don’t know how serious I am.” Then he made me a promise:
He also said I was on his Christmas list, and that he couldn’t stop smiling.
Two Months on the Water
How long is two months when you’ve already sold your old trike? That was Russ’s situation through May and June: the Tour 2.0 ships by sea from the factory, sixty working days, and he had sold his previous ride before the new one left port. A man who loves to ride, grounded, waiting on a slow boat.
The calls from those weeks are my favourite part of the record. In early May, apologizing that the tracking told me almost nothing yet, I thanked him for his patience. “I’m a patient person,” he said. I told him he sounded like one, and that I wished I was more like him. His explanation:
A month later — reading him a tracking page whose two proudest fields said null and null — I confirmed his GST balance had arrived and did the arithmetic on the sea leg: thirty more days. His verdict, the same refrain: “I’m a patient person. I can wait another month.”
Then the June call left the order behind, as calls with Russ do. We spent the minutes designing a winter jacket for his battery, to be cut from the best old coat he never wears; agreeing that zip-ties around a fat tire make a fair prairie snow chain; and returning to the warning Kim had filed back in April — Edmonton has a “pretty steep river valley,” and it would be waiting for those two motors. Before hanging up, I asked for one thing: “You better send me some pictures once you get it.” He said: “I definitely will be.”
The trike arrived in late June. He did not send pictures. He sent movies.
And here is the detail neither of them engineered: the delivery-day video went up on June 25, 2026 — one year to the day after the first call Russ and Kim ever made to us. We checked the phone log twice.
Day one, June 25, 2026. Filmed by Kim, posted the day the trike landed.
First ride, own street. Ball cap on day one; the helmet shows up with the miles.
A Thousand Miles Later: the Actual Review
“There’s been no issues and no complaints.” That is Russ on camera, a thousand miles in: roughly 1,600 km in two Edmonton months, an average of about 25 km a day. The hills that used to stop him in the river valley don’t any more. “I smile as I go up these hills.” The hydraulic disc brakes “stop on a dime”; the differential, he says twice in the video, turns the same way; and the reverse gear has, in Kim’s words from behind the camera, gotten him out of situations. Here is the review, unedited:
The 1,000-mile review, Gold Bar Park, August 2026. Filmed on their own time, sent to us when it was done.
The details he singles out match the bike as we know it, which is worth noting because owners notice different things than brochures do: two 750W motors, a front hub he uses sparingly, and a rear motor cradled in the frame, driving the two back wheels through a chain and differential. And the seat with the big backrest. Russ describes it better than the brochure does:
The recliner in question — backrest, wide saddle, and a cargo box that has clearly already been fishing.
One claim needs an honest asterisk. Russ says he can get “up to nearly 200 miles on a full charge… not kilometres, miles.” That is his number, and we print it as his. His trike’s 48V 50Ah battery holds 2,400 watt-hours; at the 15–20 watt-hours per kilometre we assume for a heavy trike in mixed riding, that supports roughly 120–160 km per charge, with more available to a gentle pace on flat ground. Plan on the conservative math and let the rest be a pleasant surprise — read every range claim that way, including ours.
The verdict, in orange work gloves: “two thumbs up. This is top-notch machine.”
What This Says About Canada
Where I grew up, respect for age was not a virtue; it was the law of the house. My father scolded me properly only once in my life — because an older friend of his came to visit, and I did not say hello first. You greet your elders before they greet you. I carried that across an ocean, and for the past year two men of my father’s generation have been answering it back in a Canadian accent: “thanks for helping Russ out here,” says one, on a call where the helping had mostly run the other way.
Nobody paid them for those videos. The only thing anyone asked for was pictures. What came back — filmed, posted, sent — was a gift, and gifts seem to be how Russ and Kim move through the world: a gas motor bolted to a friend’s bicycle, five bikes sold for a store that wasn’t theirs, an afternoon at Gold Bar Park spent making sure a company half a country away got its proof.
Canada runs on an enormous, invisible network of exactly this. E-transfers between strangers. Deposits on handshakes. A federation held together, at street level, not by policy but by the working assumption that the other person is probably decent. Economists call it social trust and measure it in surveys; Russ and Kim just practise it, the way you practise anything you intend to keep.
I will take that over any award this industry offers. But I want the record to show the trust ran the other way first. They sent the money before we’d earned it. They waited on a promise. They filmed the proof themselves. All we did was answer the phone like people — which was, if you listen back to Russ’s very first sentence, the only thing he was really shopping for.
Questions Readers Ask
Are there any Meet One trike reviews from real Canadian owners?
Yes — this article is built around one. Russ, an Edmonton rider, put roughly 1,000 miles (about 1,600 km) on his Meet One Tour 2.0 in his first two months and reported no mechanical issues on camera: hills climbed, brakes praised, differential and reverse gear singled out. His full video review is embedded above, unedited, and he was not paid to make it.
How much does the Meet One Tour 2.0 cost in Canada?
At the time of writing it is listed at $6,499 CAD at Zeus eBikes Canada. Russ paid a $5,000 deposit in April 2026, with the balance and GST that spring, before a mid-year price change. Current pricing, colours, and seat options are always on the product page.
Where can I buy a Meet One trike in Canada?
Meet One trikes reach Canadian riders through Zeus eBikes Canada, based in Brantford, Ontario — there is no walk-in dealer network. Orders ship direct; Russ’s trike travelled by sea and arrived in Edmonton about two and a half months after his order; the sea leg itself came in inside the two months he was quoted when he ordered. Our full trike lineup is here, and a human answers 1-866-938-7580.
Is there an electric trike with a reverse gear?
Yes. The Tour 2.0 has a true reverse along with its rear differential — after 1,000 miles Russ calls it the feature that gets him out of tight spots without dismounting. On a heavy trike, and for any rider who can’t easily drag one backwards, reverse is a genuine mobility feature.
Is an electric trike good for seniors or riders with limited mobility?
Often, yes: three wheels remove the balance problem, the semi-recumbent position moves pedalling forward where knees and hips handle it more comfortably, and the backrest seat carries your weight. Russ has a disability and used to ride a mobility scooter through winter; he now climbs Edmonton’s river-valley hills on dual motors. Fit still matters — our guide to electric bikes and trikes for seniors covers it, or call and talk it through first.
Is an e-transfer safe for buying an e-bike online?
It is safe when the two controls are yours: send only to an address verified by phone with a real person, and use a security answer agreed in that conversation — never one suggested by email. E-transfers have no chargeback, so an emailed “change of payment details” is always a stop-and-phone moment. The order in this article is the worked example: it survived a genuinely scary lost-transfer weekend because both sides picked up the phone, and it carried a recorded promise of a full refund if the order couldn’t proceed.
The Bottom Line
A year and two months passed between the first call and the thousand-mile video — 429 days in which two friends did their homework, sent their money on faith, waited out a slow boat, and then paid the favour forward to strangers on the internet. If you take one thing from their story, don’t let it be a trike model. Let it be Russ’s method: talk to an actual person, decide if they’re decent, and then be the kind of customer who makes decency worth it.
If a trike like his would change your riding — or someone you love has quietly stopped riding and misses it — start the way Russ did. Call 1-866-938-7580 and talk to a human (that’s the entire pitch, and it was his). Read our full Canadian electric trike guide to compare every model we carry, check Alberta’s e-bike rules if you ride where Russ does, and know the promise Russ got, on tape, before a dollar moved: if the order can’t proceed, the money comes back, in full.
My own note from the end of the April call, verbatim off the recording: “I hope that I have a friend at that age too.”
- What Happens When We Stop Believing Each Other? — the trust essay this whole story kept proving in real time.
- Electric Trikes Canada — every trike we carry, compared honestly.
- Electric Bikes for Seniors — fit, features, and dignity, in that order.
- Sheep Hunting in Alberta — the last Soapbox conversation, from the other end of the province.
Photography: stills from Russ and Kim’s videos, used with their blessing; cover typography composited by Zeus eBikes.
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