cerewa

maddyfish - What's the longest bike commute you've done day-in day-out, with weather sometimes outside of the 30degree to 95degree (F) range? And what were the grades on the hills? Would you guess that you have commuted in hotter weather than me? How 'bout colder, snowier, and icier?

Do you think you know what conditions e-bikers like me might have faced on our pedal-only bikes and our e-bikes well enough to judge us?

Or perhaps you feel you have been ignorant and rude? (yeah, right.)

urban_assault

*sigh*

Fairmont

Some folks probably need the extra power (disabilities, etc.).

A scooter/moped, etc. is better than one person hogging up the road in a Hummer.


But if a motorized bicycle is using a two-stroke, it's not doing anyone any good.


The first cars were steam and ran on coal power with a huge plume of black smoke coming out the top.

maddyfish

My commute is very short. 1/2 mile up a 250 ft. elevation hill, all weather of course. I am lucky (smart?) I live very close to everything I want. Shopping, schools, my volunteer job, entertainment

My daily (maybe I shouldn't say daily, 5 days a week) training ride is 10 miles of hills of various grades to this



then 10 miles of various grades home. The profile is of one hill, which I repeat 6 times. It started as one time, it is now up to six, soon it be will be seven. I do this all weather(excluding snow) 5 days a week. On snow days I do the best workout that I can with my mountain bike in combination with the trainer ( I hate the trainer).

cerewa

Clearly you devote a lot of time and effort to keeping yourself in shape. If only everyone cared for their physical health as much as you. Did you also mention that you take care to choose environmentally friendly food? That's wonderful. Perfection is unattainable, but if people would try as hard as you anyway, we'd be better off...

Platy

Personally, I don't have a problem with anyone posting about powered bikes on LCF. The focus here has always been mostly on the car free lifestyle. If a powered bicycle enables someone to be more car free, I'd be interested in reading about it. That would also be true for stuff like kayaks, burros, chariots, zeppelins, rocket sleds and rickshaws. Most of us ride plain old bicycles, but variety is the spice of life, right?

atman

c'mon people. Of course electric bikes are part of the LCF culture. When the Stokemonkey finally ships again, this forum is going to ejaculate gushy prose all over everyone. Most of that, admittedly, will go down in the Utility forum, but you can't tell me folks here won't be purring.

I live in SF these days, so give me a Brompton Nano, the electric bike you can fold and take on a MUNI bus, and I'll be your new best friend. This would be a completely different city if I simply didn't care how steep a gradient was.

mike

Technically, a gas powered bicycle is a motorcycle, not a bicycle.

However, as far as being "green", a clean running, quiet-muffler moped getting 100 mpg is clearly better for the environment than a huge 12 mpg SUV. If you were to replace half the automobiles on the road with mopeds, think of the extra space on the roads and the reduced need for parking.

Of course, anybody who has ever been to Taiwan knows what moped world looks like; noisy, dirty, chaos. This might sound crazy, but I prefer Car-congested USA streets to the madness of the Taiwanese streets with those noisy, filthy, angry little mopeds clogging up intesections. It would be a huge step backwards if we went in that direction.

politicalgeek

Wouldn't part of the problem there be the population density?

I've thought about a moped or motorcycle to help for the few odd times a bike isn't doable.

maddyfish

Wouldn't any motor powered bicycle be a motor-bicycle? An shortened would be a motorcycle?
It is word games. What matters is, do regular bike people occasionally have questions about electric/gas motor-bicycles? And the answer for me is yes.

donnamb 

Well, the admin decided to do it.