Letting go of the big car mindset

Hi all I wanted to share a short story from a cityslick that's been riding different 2 wheelers for all my life. What you probably experienced in your life as well once you turn 18 is the social peer pressure of getting a car. Like at every birthday party: "So when are you going for your car licence?" and I always kind of shrugged that off as something later as I was enjoying street cycling and mtb's. Then personal life and work kept me occupied and time went by fast and came to the conclusion having to haul a car around in the dense urban metro districts is kind of stupid. In rush hour every road is clogged with dusty fossil engines in stationary. And the drivers all look bummed out.

Anyway enjoy your favourite microtransport the future has just begun. E-bikes ftw!

P.S. who needs a 200mph engine when city limits are heavily enforced? No shame in a speed limiter.

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Really interesting, thanks for sharing.
I tried an ebike but went with a poor bike conversion and one that was legal in my country (uk, 250w, max speed 15.5mph). It was under powered for my needs of covering 16 miles of countryside each way to work. Naturally that's my fault but didn't want to venture into illegal even thou I suspect it would have been fine.
I got rid of my car 3yrs back in place of an electric moped-shaped object and have really enjoyed it. 50 mile range, 50mph top speed and it's perfect.
I'll go back to an bike once/if the laws are relaxed
Clearly no exercise at all mind you. I do use an adult push scooter for last mile stuff which works well
- Have you tried a mid-drive? A good 250w mid drive can be pretty capable.
  
  No, I hadn't considered that one drive would be more efficient than another. It was a rear drive BTW.
  I think the issue is more that I need it to be helping at 20mph and that's not legally allowed at the mo

Nice setup

Which bike is this? It looks like something I can imagine myself riding too :)
- This model is a Ouxi V8 250W drive ~80km reach on flat terrain. This is a good choice for daily use. You should check out Ape Ryder bikes they look like café racers and ready to be on par with dirtbikes, with some luck we get better laws about safety regulations in the future. When e-bike mechanics get a know how.

It's amazing here, the bike railtrails around here are so heavily used that it displaces dozens or hundreds of cars in a few city blocks. It's amazing that despite the overwhelming bike traffic (not to mention tons of runners and dogwalkers), our city has yet to dedicate more public roads to something other than purely private vehicles. If the city even just gave 20 total roads to bikes and buses, people could move much more freely throughout the city, without gridlock on every block.

I wish there wasn't a stigma around throttles. We can't have moped style ebikes in California anymore. I swear one person sees a teenager do a wheely on an ebike, and suddenly the entire town hates them.
- Yeah and most of the time the people being idiots aren't even on e-bikes, they're on e-motorcycles. I keep reading articles about "person on e-bike breaking laws" and it's a sur-ron or similar e-motorcycle.
  There was nothing wrong with throttle e-bikes with a 20mph limit (class 3), and now california ruined that for no reason.
- They just hate teenagers. Us adults gotta knock it off with that mentality
  
  This is the truth. I have a coworker who is into scooters and he was complaining about the NIMBY, ban-everything mindset currently pervading the entire electric scooter discussion.
  I had to point out that the exact same arguments and whining currently being aimed at scooter riders -- e.g., "they're running up and down the sidewalk/ignoring red lights/weaving around traffic/'zooming' up my street/scaring my dog/wilting my rhododendrons/etc." -- are word for word the same arguments that were being directed against kids on (largely BMX) bicycles 30 years ago. Verbatim.
  Now that there's a hot new thing to screech about, suddenly pedal bicycles are automatically wholesome clean safe fun for the whole family.
  In a further 30 years when jet powered pogo sticks or whatever the hell are the new fad, no one will complain about scooters, which will by then be normalized, and the cycle will start all over.
  Also: You can do a wheelie all day long on a pedal bike, too. I sure as shit did when I was a teenager.
- Same here even though fatbikes have many uses like going over tramrails and surviving potholes. Doing wheelies is a phase.

That's the dream. What's always stopped me though is security. I could go anywhere on it, but I'm not comfortable leaving it in public spaces while I go about my business.
I'm curious to hear how you feel and what you do about it.
- The hiplok d1000 is a couple hundred bucks, but it takes at least 10 cutting discs to get through, and produces devastating ceramic dust which is sure to give any bike thief a terrible case of mesothelioma. If you are worried about your bike, I'd get one of those. You might also want to see if your city participates in a bike locker program, or summer bike valet services. Multiple cities in the Pacific Northwest do this, in the US and Canada.
- I use a Skunklock Chemical.
  Someone might be dumb enough to try and cut it, but if they do I don't think they'll keep trying.
  The Skunklock Carbon and Litelok X3 are also good options.
  
  I had a frying pan with a stinky handle in case it burned which it did I got maced by my own pan.
- For now with a strong chain lock and a movement alarm. For long storage I use the basement or a camera secured bicycle stand or next to other bikes. And insurance companies won't cover everything. But petty bike thiefs are a here as well police is not much use for this but a thief is a thief they should know the risks.

20 comments