I live in New England, and I had a friend who purchased an electric bike.
He wasn’t using it at all, and lent it to me for a week. I had so much fun riding it, I got one for myself, and one for my wife. I purchased the Lectric Bikes (2.0) and an extra battery for each of them.
They are built like tanks. Really strong and tough, though it makes them quite heavy, nearly sixty pounds each. The newer ones are less heavy. They have nice shock absorbers in the front, fat knobby tires that make the ride better, and a wide seat with a shock absorber in the seat post.
I got into an accident last year when I was riding on the bike trail that goes around the Charles River in Boston, and a guy stepped in front of me causing me to swerve and hit big tree root. I was doing about 15 MPH (and had given him warning probably 20 yards before I came on him that I was approaching, but for some reason as I came up he stepped in front of me. I went off the trail, hit that tree root, and flew about 15 feet through the air, landing in a heap. Not hurt, just rash from the dirt on the side of the trail. And the bike had no damage I could see, which surprised me as it fully somersaulted through the air and crashed into the ground. I had stood up on the pedals as I left the trail, so I suspect that helped in some way. But I picked it up, dusted it off, no more than a scrape. That thing, as heavy as it is, is really tough. At my age, that could have turned out far worse. But I am even more cautious now.
But here is the thing: This electric bike is for fun and enjoyment.
Not work.
Not transportation.
Wholly for fun.
Honestly, I stay off the roads. People are too distracted by their cell phones for me to feel safe in any way, and when I do get on a road, I drive extremely defensively, even pulling over and stopping to let cars pass. If I come to an intersection where a car is pulling out, it isn’t uncommon for me to simply pull over far, far ahead of the vehicle so as to not even enter into their decision to pull out or not.
We live near a bike trail. Ride through our neighborhood to get to it. Neither one of us is fit enough to ride a standard bike, though we can.
We fold them up and put them in our car and drive to different bike trails.
We putter along, probably doing 10 MPH, we have bluetooth helmets so we can converse as we ride one in front of the other (not side by side, blocking the trail)
It is nice, a lot of fun. It is something we can do together. We get to ride, feel the wind in our face, enjoy the scenery, and yak to each other conversationally.
I 3-D printed a lockable battery box about two feet long that I bolt to my bike, and carry an extra battery for each of us.
If I go by myself, I can do 60 miles with the extra batteries. When I charge the batteries, I do so in my shed, away from the house.
If we ever got into a gas crunch, I would explore using it for getting around town and not commuting (since I expect to retire soon) It has baskets I can attach to the front and back of the bike if I wished to carry groceries.
But that isn’t why I have it. I have it solely for entertainment.
I purchased it a year ago last November, and since then, I have put nearly 1,200 miles on it. I took my wife on a fifty mile ride on Cape Code, but she won’t do that again. She was uncomfortable being on the seat that long.
And I did ride it in cold weather, into November, and even once in March. But I am in no way hard-core about this. I see people on bikes in January, and still think they have a screw loose.
I admire people my age tooling around on standard bikes, but...it isn’t my thing. My days of humping a bike up a hill are over. Sure, it would be good for me, but so would eating margarine instead of butter and balancing my diet better.
“I had so much fun riding it, I got one for myself, and one for my wife. I purchased the Lectric Bikes...”
I live in Montana — not too far from downtown, just 4 miles — but up in the mountains enough to make bicycle riding objectionable.
My neighbor has one of these electric bicycles and makes it home up multiple hills very well.
I would definitely purchase one IF I wanted to do any more bicycling. I do not.
My first scooter in college had a 90 mile range at 115 MPG (real world, I did not want the tank to go empty). Really similar to an electric bicycle with an extra battery...
Have fun!
Great post there.
But margarine is not good for you. Butter is better.
And ghee is better than butter. (Ghee is clarified butter; it can be made at home from butter.)
The electric bikes and less than 50cc motor bikes(scooters & mopeds) are very popular along the rt 1A seacoast road/area in NH too.
Another place they are a must is Acadia National Park up in Bar Harbor, ME. They make riding up the hills on the carriage roads fun. Especially, when you are easily passing other tourists straining/sweating as you are just cruising along.
Dang, you're tough! 1200 miles, off-road, and going strong. I'm in my 70's with an e-bike, but I don't use it often, certainly not 60 miles at a time. I can get up to 28mph via pedal-assist, but usually don't. Can't get my wife on a bike to join me, she remembers the time she got catapulted off my motorcycle when we were young, on mountain trails when I hit a rut on the trail. She called them coffins on wheels and stopped riding on them.