Smother Amy w/Ebiker Love (Lust optional...)

LockH

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As noted just now in ES Newz... One Biking Grrrl may be... undecided... re having and using bettery-electric assist?

I Felt Guilty Using An Electric Bike, But Soon Learned How Vital They Are For Many Cyclists, seen here:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=57933&p=1382401#p1382400


... where writer Amy Packham concludes: Maybe I could be won over after all.

What do you think about e-bikes? Do you have one? Have you tried one? I’d love to hear from you, email amy.packham@huffpost.com


She's love to hear from YOU!

Watt say?
 
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/amy-packham/

Life Writer at HuffPost UK writing about parenting news and features. I also contribute to the Lifestyle section writing about fitness and healthy living.

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:wink:
 
999zip999 said:
LockH I want to sign up for your dating service. But does she own an ebike ?

Hehe... Own an electric? Not yet. It's up to the ES Krew to help get her addicted. :mrgreen:

... and BTW... she's got a 2yo.... NO idea where her other half is... if she has another half.
 
LockH said:
999zip999 said:
LockH I want to sign up for your dating service. But does she own an ebike ?

Hehe... Own an electric? Not yet. It's up to the ES Krew to help get her addicted. :mrgreen:

... and BTW... she's got a 2yo.... NO idea where her other half is... if she has another half.

I don’t like ‘other halves’, they double the weight of one, at least. :wink:
 
^^ Hehe... Fairly lousy odds on marriage these daze... If I wanted to gamble I'd be buying lottery tickets. (`Cept my father once explained, that lotteries are a "tax on stupidity"...) :lol:
 
So I sent her a (non-lustful) letter ...

Hey Amy -

I thought I'd respond to your request for other thoughts on e-biking. So here goes.

E-biking isn't cheating any more than wearing lycra, sporting aero bars or plopping down serious coin for a superlightweight road bike or super shock-absorbing mountain bike is cheating. You are merely buying gear with different uses in mind. Same goes for an e-bike.

I built mine (CraigsList used bike plus e-bay wheel kit) to make commuting practical. Years ago I used to commute regularly to work and back home. Nine miles one-way on flat roads was pretty doable in my 30s - even in hot Phoenix summers. Great exercise. I'd commute by road bike 2-3 times each week.

Now fast forward about 25-30 years. I live in hilly Fountain Hills. I work 16 miles away in Scottsdale, AZ. I'm 58. I'm still pretty fit, but at 58 I don't recover as quickly from exercise. And we have hills with a 10% grade here. Also 16 miles is twice as far as I used to commute. Even though I absolutely love cycling and have ridden many 50-100 mile rides, 32 miles per day with hills just ain't gonna happen ... unless I maybe use an e-bike? So I made one.

I call it my "hill flattener." But it also gets me where I'm going faster than my standard bike. So it is also my "trip shortener." Put simply, it expands how far I can go without using a 3000 lb car.

Here's a track showing my trip home last night. It's late. I'm tired after 12 hours. The trip is uphill for long sections. But with my e-bike, I'm home in about 50 minutes and I get some good exercise without taking time out to go to a gym.

http://www.sportstracklive.com/track/detail/wturber/e-bike/commute-home/ebike/2450602

And yes, I said "good exercise." My effort in assisting the bike typically elevates my normal 60 bpm heart rate to the 100-110 range. 50 minutes of that twice a day three to five times a week is pretty good exercise. Here's a track showing my heart rate on my commute home.

http://www.sportstracklive.com/track/detail/wturber/Cycling/Commute-home-/ebike-/2378916#/heartRate

On my 32 mile commute I use about 650 watt hours of electricity. That's less than 10 cents compared to the $3-4 in gas my car would consume. Commuting this way is more fun. It's healthier (so long as some car doesn't run me over).

Every weekend people come to Fountain Hills at sunrise to begin bike rides. Its a wonderful place to start a ride. But few of these people ride their bikes here. Most haul them with cars, trucks and SUVs. That seems sorta like taking the escalator upstairs at the gym so you can get to the stair-climber machine. Is that cheating?

E-bikes are not just for commuting. The weekend (Super Bowl Sunday) before I had a fairly major surgery I de-stressed by going on a 50 mile bike ride. This trip would have been completely impractical on a regular bicycle given my physical condition and fitness level. (See photo attached)

http://www.sportstracklive.com/track/detail/wturber/e-bike/long-ride/ebike/2406284

http://www.sportstracklive.com/track/detail/wturber/e-bike/long-ride/ebike/2406281

This isn't a competition. E-bikes aren't "cheating." They're just a nice way to get where you want to go ... assuming that you want to enjoy the journey.

Jay Turberville

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GO Team! :lol:
 
Yeah. She would love to hear from us.

In other words, she would love to have somebody else essentially write her own article so she can pass it off as good investigative writing.

I personally would avoid her and her requests.

But that's just me.
 
Good writing, WTURBER.

It's ironic.

The coastal elites, the Menlo Park crew, the Silicon Valley outfit, they always had as their biggest insult that the others..........."didn't get it".

And yet, here we have somebody from the Huff Post, who basically.............doesn't get it.

Won over? Won over? WON? OVER?

We need to win you over?

Uhh........no. You need to win US over. We are way way out in front on so many things.
 
Actually, she seemed to get it pretty well. I probably made few points that she didn't already make or understand.

And I don't really care about winning anyone over. I'm more inclined toward trying to nudge people slightly one way or the other.

I also failed to make perhaps the biggest point. Prior to getting my e-bike I was getting almost zero bicycle exercise. With my e-bike I'm now getting about 20 hours a month of decent e-bike exercise (HR raised from 60 to 110). The reality is that many people buy a bike with the intent to use it for transportation, fitness and exercise. But most of the bikes purchased sit unused in garages. So the e-bike is actually the "uncheat" since it helps to get people to stop "cheating" when they leave their ordinary bicycles unused.
 
My point is.........these HuffPost coastal Libs are supposed to be up to speed on all of this stuff. They are supposed to be driving these agenda, not suddenly realizing half-way thru that they know jack!

For me, the eBike is all about not relying on the outdated infrastructure of public and private transport. It's about bypassing the shortcomings of other peoples ideologies.

California, for example, highest percentage of gasoline tax. Highest cost of Electricity per K/W unit. This is needed to pay for things, those things do not include the infrastructure.

One would imagine that Progressives at the Huff would be up to speed on the ramifications of their ideology. Apparently not.

$100Bn projected spending on an 800 mile High Speed rail. We could have had major road works for $50bn back when Arnie was Gov but that never happened.

Forbes rated States by Infrastructure. California came 49th. Mississippi came 50th.

1960's, 40% of budget on infrastructure.

Today..........7% ion infrastructure. Rest on welfare and educational entitlements, despite having the 47th worst schools in the Union.

So yeah, we ride ebikes becuase of decisions made by other people that interfere with our ability to get around.
 
^^ Hey Sailor? Ya do know this "HuffPost coastal Lib" is from England eh? :lol:
 
The Mighty Volt said:
<snip>

One would imagine that Progressives at the Huff would be up to speed on the ramifications of their ideology. Apparently not.
<snip>

Today..........7% ion infrastructure. Rest on welfare and educational entitlements, despite having the 47th worst schools in the Union.

So yeah, we ride ebikes becuase of decisions made by other people that interfere with our ability to get around.

All sides have blinders on. That's just being human.

E-bikers ride for different reasons and I'm perfectly fine with that.
 
The Mighty Volt said:
Agreed, 100%. We all got our reasons.

Hehe... My fav reason? The stink of the exhaust of the diseasal-powered engine... watt got me interested in electric traction in the first place. :wink:
 
For me........it was just about a bit of fun initially but then I began to transfer over, so to speak, the reasons I had that originated with Ethanol and Bio Diesel.

I am just tired of foreign Oil and all the BS.

Once I got on an Ebike, and moved to London England, I began to see that the Ebike was an Urban game changer.

I live with this woman and she says it's all about "Laziness".

Ok, You {not you personally!} stand at the platform, having paid $8 to travel 4 miles.......for a train that ain't coming, and tell me it's all about laziness, as I zoom into town with the canal towpaths, the back roads, the bridges, all at my disposal, for $0.50 worth of electricity.

I think an awful lot of the do-gooders really don't want to hear stories like that.

They prefer some saccharine "Oh I hurt my leg working at my minimum wage job and now I use my 165 watt special to amicably tootle about on my way back from Starbucks where I witnessed some real quality sensitivity training in action earlier today."

They aren't really about some young guy telling them that it's all about able bodied dudes deciding that, you know what, tearing around town isn't just for guys that own Ferrari's and play golf with the Chief of Police :lol:

I ebike because I like to break the rules that cost me money and because my ebike allows me to circumscribe a situation which was engineered not by me but by high-minded lunatics.

But that's not newsworthy, is it?

My early morning commute involves a half-mile dash on a 3500w MAC set up so I can get through the level crossing near my home as fast as I can and into work so I can be there before everyone else gets there and make the canteen and toilets clean and get my $12 for that before doing my regular days work at Construction.

Then I use the ebike to RIP home so I can go on ES or Youtube. And I never have to walk or worry about Trains. And I am 25 times over the legal Watt limit and I don't care because the game is rigged to begin with and the trains are packed and the bus is packed and it's expensive and it robs me of my income etc etc.

The Ebike World is Texas in the 1880's and my Ebike is my Horse.

I don't berate people about it. I don't pull in and grab some random stranger and say "Hey! Buddy!! 35 Hundred Watts!! Whaddya make of that pal!"

I don't pull up beside some lycra clad speedster and say "Oy! Buddy!! Race ya to the frocking lights, loser".

It's not about bullying cyclists or showing up motorists or being a road hog or any of that.

It's not like that.

I am smart about it, courteous, don't speed where I shouldn't speed, but the game is rigged, unwinnable, and the Ebike allows me to commute, to work, to survive and I love it for that.
 
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