A long, long, time ago, when Twitter did not exist and the Winklevoss twins were still in high school, I got into biking. Though I was 48 when I started, I had the power and speed of a longtime features writer. Even on trips with people who appeared to be in their late 70s I was last. My last long trip, which I took with my friend Herb, was in California wine country, when the temperature was in the low 90s.
“Have you noticed that the migrant workers are sitting under the shade while the two New Yorkers are out here trying to get up the hill?” I asked Herb, somewhere south of Bodega Bay.
About a half-hour later, dazed with heat and exhaustion, I fell on a ragged piece of pavement and broke my thumb. The next year, Herb and I started renting a house in the country.
It was in these years I learned the big lie of bike tour advertising: “gently rolling hills.” There are no gentle hills in biking. If it’s not a big, fat geographic lump that can be viewed from space and just about kills you it is not a hill. I spent a lot of time in France and Northern California and New Jersey walking up gently rolling hills.
This was why I was enchanted, a while back, to notice that some bike tour outfits, like Butterfield & Robinson, were offering electric motorized bikes or e-bikes. I couldn’t rent any e-bikes in New York City because while the city now has a bike-share program that encourages helmetless tourists to drive into buses and federal law allows e-bikes as long as they don’t go over 20 miles an hour, riding an e-bike here can get you a $500 fine. You can buy the bikes here, you just can’t ride them. The impetus was said to be speeding food delivery guys, though from what I see on the street nobody told them.
I find an e-bike company called Pedego, based in Irvine, Calif., whose 56-year-old chief executive, Don DiCostanzo, arranges a loan. His boomer work-out philosophy:
“We want to get some exercise and we don’t want to work too hard at it.”
His Brooklyn-based dealer, Damon Victor, at Greenpath Electric Bikes, who sells throughout the northeast United States, delivers two bikes: the Step-Thru Interceptor and the City Commuter, both of which retail for $2,895. They are gorgeous, with leather seats and handlebars. They are also enormous, the Clydesdales of biking, both weighing in at just under 60 pounds. The bike I normally ride, a Terry Symmetry, is 22 pounds.
You can ride these bikes with no motorized assistance, with occasional assistance with the turn of a hand throttle adjacent to the right handlebar, or with the push of a button near the left handlebar, which gives you constant pedal assistance in four levels up to 20 miles an hour. My average speed is 8. Damon gives me a sidewalk lesson punctuated by my hollering when I switch into a power mode and the bike rockets off. I am not used to a bike doing so much when I do nothing. In a way, it’s like a vibrator.
“Have you noticed that the migrant workers are sitting under the shade while the two New Yorkers are out here trying to get up the hill?” I asked Herb, somewhere south of Bodega Bay.About a half-hour later, dazed with heat and exhaustion, I fell on a ragged piece of pavement and broke my thumb. The next year, Herb and I started renting a house in the country.
It was in these years I learned the big lie of bike tour advertising: “gently rolling hills.” There are no gentle hills in biking. If it’s not a big, fat geographic lump that can be viewed from space and just about kills you it is not a hill. I spent a lot of time in France and Northern California and New Jersey walking up gently rolling hills.
This was why I was enchanted, a while back, to notice that some bike tour outfits, like Butterfield & Robinson, were offering electric motorized bikes or e-bikes. I couldn’t rent any e-bikes in New York City because while the city now has a bike-share program that encourages helmetless tourists to drive into buses and federal law allows e-bikes as long as they don’t go over 20 miles an hour, riding an e-bike here can get you a $500 fine. You can buy the bikes here, you just can’t ride them. The impetus was said to be speeding food delivery guys, though from what I see on the street nobody told them.
I find an e-bike company called Pedego, based in Irvine, Calif., whose 56-year-old chief executive, Don DiCostanzo, arranges a loan. His boomer work-out philosophy:
“We want to get some exercise and we don’t want to work too hard at it.”
His Brooklyn-based dealer, Damon Victor, at Greenpath Electric Bikes, who sells throughout the northeast United States, delivers two bikes: the Step-Thru Interceptor and the City Commuter, both of which retail for $2,895. They are gorgeous, with leather seats and handlebars. They are also enormous, the Clydesdales of biking, both weighing in at just under 60 pounds. The bike I normally ride, a Terry Symmetry, is 22 pounds.
You can ride these bikes with no motorized assistance, with occasional assistance with the turn of a hand throttle adjacent to the right handlebar, or with the push of a button near the left handlebar, which gives you constant pedal assistance in four levels up to 20 miles an hour. My average speed is 8. Damon gives me a sidewalk lesson punctuated by my hollering when I switch into a power mode and the bike rockets off. I am not used to a bike doing so much when I do nothing. In a way, it’s like a vibrator.
by Joyce Wadler, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Pedego Electric Bike Company
