Cyclosaurus

Except road cyclists aren't cheating by using lighter bikes, etc. They are still working entirely within the limit of what their own body can produce. Adding an external power source is a lot more like cheating than simply maximizing what power you can produce yourself (set aside the question of what exactly anyone is cheating at outside of an actual race event...but I digress). You've taken a single remark by a single person and blown it into some sort of campaign against discrimination. From what I can tell by your postings in this thread, you seem like someone too lazy to put the work in to develop speed on your own and want everyone to affirm your choice, which is why an offhand comment by someone out on the road sent you into a tailspin of complaining. Your choice is your own, if you are happy with it, great. If you aren't, make a change. Not many people here would choose to buy a big heavy expensive ebike as you did. Yet virtually everybody here understands that each person rides their own ride and if you find what works for you and gets you out there, then that's all that matters and we're happy for you, and you aren't going to get criticized for it.

With that said...I'm going to break that rule though and criticize your choices since you have stubbornly taken this discussion this far. I think you wasted your $5K on a bad decision. You probably should have bought a decent road bike and a decent mountain bike (with plenty of cash to spare), or perhaps a CX bike and an extra set of wheels so you can switch between on and off road. Then you should have put in the miles and learned to ride the godda** thing properly so a pothole doesn't send you barreling off the road into someone's yard. And you would have gotten your lazy a** in shape so you could get up hills without a motor doing the lion's share of the work. You're whiny and insecure and lack discipline and that's why you aren't getting any respect here.

Doctor Morbius

Oh please dear God, make it stop.

I seriously think my IQ has dropped about 10% just by reading this thread. This could be an episode on the Jerry Springer show.

WalksOn2Wheels

I saw this thread when it first popped up and thought it was funny. Then today I see it's up to 7 pages. After going through the first page, I skipped reading the rest and I think what you said sums it up nicely. I appreciate your efforts.

tcarl

Thanks for the laugh.

shelbyfv

I've come around to the view that this is a troll thread. As such, it is far superior to the usual "why do you wear bike specific clothes?" or "why do you have a nicer bike than mine?" or "why do you do charity rides?" or .... Eight pages, not one poster agrees with OP and still the thread lives on. Epic!

Jarrettsin

Save your time guys and girl

Stucky

We weren't talking about riders- you had mentioned that a road bike can barely handle a smooth road; and that it "can't stop". Ashton uses a stock road bike for his insane stunts.

bakes1

Perfectly summed up.
You would think the OP is Mr. Magoo out there on the road with all the supposed issues he states he is trying to overcome lol. With a motor no less.
Next I am sure he is going to tell us he uses the motor for the extra burst of speed needed for when ACME safes are falling on his head.
Or is the motor more beneficial for those times that he is being chased by Bigfoot?

ddeand 

After reading though this ever-expanding thread again, I think I'm beginning to understand a few things about the OP and his basic premise that a mountain bike will not be as efficient on the road as it is on the trails and that an ebike will do the climbs easier enabling him to have more fun (as he describes it). The problem seems to arise when he is called out by a cyclist who deems his ebike to be "cheating", and most here seem to agree with that assessment. Perhaps none of this little brouhaha would have occurred if the OP had taken a few different approaches or thought of some additional considerations, such as:

• Post this in the eBike Forum where other like-minded riders might be more sympathetic to your concerns. In the General Cycling Forum, a post like this will almost always evolve into what we have seen over the last seven pages.
• [I'm going to state this with absolutely no knowledge of the selection process that the OP went through or how thorough was the shop where he bought the bike in explaining to him the ramifications of ebike usage] Perhaps a little more research into the issues surrounding ebikes and trails (especially single tracks) might have given the OP a broader perspective of the issues surrounding the use of ebikes on trails. There are major issues with their use.
• I imagine the store where the ebike was bought was licking their chops at selling a $5200 bike. Perhaps the shop could have been more forthcoming as to how the OP's intended use might be perceived (not likely, though, from a sales perspective).
• From the initial post, it sounds like the OP bought the bike to ride with a friend who just got back into riding. If the OP is also attempting to lose weight or improve fitness, the bike shop might have included options that could lead to greater overall fitness gains. E.g., a rider could easily purchase a very nice road bike, mountain bike, and cyclocross bike for the amount spent on the ebike. The additional effort need to move the bicycles will ultimately be translated into fitness gains. This I know from experience.

The introduction of a new style of bicycle (ebikes) into the mix creates issues and questions and problems that haven't existed to a great extent, but now they need to be addressed. I think the OP has a bit of thinking to do about how he is perceived on his ebike and if that is the perception he wishes to embody. I don't think anyone is telling him what to ride, but they are questioning what he expects other to think about him.

trail_monkey

No ****! OP appears to be pretty smart but doesn't appear to have much common sense if that makes sense. I have a SS rigid MTB that weighs 25 lbs and I built it for $2000. And I bet the OP could have found a damm nice bike for that much to get in shape on. I also have rode this MTB on the road. It does fine with just a touch more rolling resistance. We do urban rides sometimes on our mountain bikes and cyclocross bikes and road bikes. They all mix so for the OP to keep saying that a mtb doesn't ride good on the road.....sure it can.....just not as well as a road bike. Heck if your not racing then who the hell cares anyways.

ShortLegCyclist

And real skiiers and snowboarders don't use lifts, they herringbone back up the mountain every time!

79pmooney

But if an E-bike weighs 50 pounds and mine weigh ~20, that's a 30 pound stoker with legs of a TdF rider!

Ben

AlmostTrick

^^^Unnecessarily harsh. Shopkins not only supplied us with this wonderful thread, but has stuck around and been very civil in his response... Without any supporters, and even in the face of outright ridicule. Either he's the best of trolls, or innocent / naive as all hell. (I'm guessing one of the latter) Either way, I applaud him, his choices, and this thread! Pedal On with extra power, Shopkins! GoGoGo...

Oldguyonoldbike

+1
I hope you enjoy your bike.
The street I live on has a slight dip in it where it passes over a creek, about ten to fifteen feet difference in elevation. I'm often surprised to see people struggle up the incline, sometimes getting off of their (mountain) bikes and walking the twenty-five yards or so until they get back to level ground. I would never dream of saying anything to any of them. It's great that they're out there on bikes instead of sitting in a car or on the bus.

Camilo

I think there's a good reason to have an electric assist bike for fitness riding. Some places have steep hills, kind of like the river valleys in the Twin Cities, but all over the place, much longer, more common and steeper. (yes, I've ridden all over the Twin Citie... yes there are "hills" but not many of them and not a lot of them are tough).

Hills can make riding difficult or even inaccessible for the common rider.

For example, I live in a place high on a steep hill. The ride home consists of 2-3 miles of 3-10% grades. That's in addition to the fact that there are no rides from my house that don't involve several other 1-3 mile hills of similar grade. If you're not quite fit you sincerely might not be able to ride to and from home. So the alternatives are: get totally discouraged from biking and quit, drive to a place where you can ride or use an electric assist bike to make your particular start and end place ride-able for you. It makes perfect sense for fitness riding.

Like gearing questions, never question anyone's need for low gears (or maybe electric assist) just because you're age, fitness or geography don't require it.

right on

CliffordK

I could imagine passing a marathon runner struggling to maintain a 12 to 13 MPH average on a training run....

And the Marathon runner might comment "Ohhhhhh a cheater bike."

I'd just get a good laugh about it and keep on pedalling.

I'm not going to log onto a runner's website to explain to the world that according to Sir Isaac Newton both the runner and the cyclist are doing the same amount of "work". In fact, the cyclist is doing more work because he has to drag that 20 pound bike up hills, whereas the runner only has super lightweight "air" shoes, and thin shorts.

tcarl

I think I've figured out the original poster's line of thinking: If I lived in Colorado and wanted to solely drive off road trails, a Jeep would be fine. Since I actually live in Missouri and have many hundreds of miles of flat, straight interstate highway between me and the mountains, if I want to drive these off road trails in Colorado, I need to drive my 4 wheel drive vehicle on the Interstate to get there. In order to make the closest comparison (since other posters have stated that his electric assist mountain bike costs in the $5000.00 range) I need to get a Land Rover/Range Rover - it's also expensive, it has a big V-8 engine (to compensate for the extra heaviness of the vehicle), and while it rides the Interstate in smooth luxury, it can also handle the toughest of off road trails. But, on the other hand, if I wanted to drive that flat, straight Interstate to Colorado, but had no interest in getting off the highway when I got there, if I chose to drive something like a BMW, I'd be cheating. Why? Well, the BMW is not monstrously huge, handles beautifully, is beautifully engineered and state of the art, and is equipped with high performance road (highway) tires. To emphasize: despite all of these attributes, driving the BMW is cheating because it was not designed with off-road capabilities or for off-road use.

tcarl

I also know a man with an electric motor assist added to his Surly touring bike. He likes to take biking trips in Europe. Now that he's 80 years old he finds the Alps are just getting too hard for him. So he added the motor to help him in the mountains.

OldTryGuy

What ever floats one's boat and I'll accept one if you're offering.

Hypno Toad

I'm a huge fan of low gearing. My Kona Dew Drop has a 30/34 option, with this gearing, I was the only rider* to climb Oriole Rd Climb on the Almanzo 100. (*many riders climbed it on their bike, but nobody around me in the race could stay on their bike). This is mostly because I have a 'granny' gear on the Kona. Many 'serious' riders turn their nose up at granny gears; however, I doubt many of them can pedal up a gravel 20% grade.

To repeat, don't worry about what other people think or say about your bike; if it brings you joy and you ride it, we're cool!

ShortLegCyclist

All credit to poster Clifford for this video, but I love it, talk about your low gearing! But cheating?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgIL6eHHgZU

Hypno Toad

That's great! Engineers... LOL! I think I'd have a hard time staying balanced at such low speeds.

BobbyG

What if Shopkins 1995 charged the e-bike's bike's battery by pedaling a stationary bike or trainer hooked to a generator?

bakes1

I guess you missed the paragraph in his ORIGINAL POST where he blatantly puts down new mountain bikers by referencing them as 'non biking males' who can't hack it on trails so they banish their bike to the garage "and the XBOX gets turned on"
He is not civil and he is not naive.
Or does civil mean something different in your dictionary?
He is quite obviously a troll and not even a clever one at that.

AlmostTrick

Meh, that was quite a while and many posts ago. Probably his battery ran out of juice that day and he was extra sore when he posted...

Kicking a cyclist when he's down and already been piled on just seems like... cheating!

Surely he would gain much respect from all the members of the board!