Thank you Scott. This is what I have increasingly felt since the tone changed in the last few posts, from seeking information to making judgement calls. This is exactly why Steve and I became more uncomfortable with the OTHER site. Please, let us not go down this rabbit hole.   Dodie Miller

And can we please add philosophical discussions regardingVirtues or negatives about ebikes, loaded touring, sag wagons, etc to the list of out of bounds topics on this site. It is too toxic.

Though I'm replying to Scott, this post is really meant for all on this thread.  If my earlier post in this thread was seen as shaming anyone or being judgemental, I apologize for that as it was not my intention.  The point I'm trying to make (perhaps not too skillfully) deals with the fundamental definition of "cycle touring" or "adventure cycling" or whatever it is you call our adventurous rambles on bicycles.  I'm asking "Who are we?"

People ride motorcycles in the same way that we ride bicycles. They commute to/from work and go shopping on them. They sometimes take long trips on them.  Sometimes they load up saddlebags and go on long camping trips, and sometimes they even go coast-to-coast on camping trips on their motorcycles.   They go on recreational rides on the weekends on their motorcycles.  Almost everything we do on bicycles they do on motorcycles.  While we may ride mountain bikes for off-road adventures, they ride dirt bikes for a motorized wilderness adventure.   They choose to ride motorcycles instead of riding bicycles.    While I could wander off into the pros/cons of bicycles vs. motorcycles (health issues, air pollution, global-warming considerations, travel speed, noise, cost, etc.) that would confuse the point.  The point is that some folks choose to ride motorcycles, some folks choose to ride bicycles, and that there are fundamental differences in the 2 modes of travel.

While an e-bike is certainly different in appearance from a large motorcycle, it is still a motorized cycle.  I suppose you could consider it a hybrid machine, because it gets power from the rider pedaling it as well as from the electric motor (usually - but some e-bikes are capable of fully motorized travel as well).  But that's exactly what the "mo-ped" I had in my youth did.  I delivered newspapers in my youth, and at age 11 I bought a moped from the Sears & Roebuck store in downtown Little Rock- it was an Austrian manufactured motorbike that used a 2-cycle engine to develop 0.9 horsepower, and it had pedals that allowed you to supplement it's power need for steep hills or whenever you ran out of fuel (a common occurrence for me in those days).  But no one would have considered my moped to be a bicycle, even though you could pedal it.  Many (most?) e-bikes today look like bicycles with the addition of the battery and the control mechanisms, but there are some that blur the line between bicycle and motorcycle.  And then there are electric motorcycles, such as the Harley Davidson Hotwire.

So back to the definition thing - what exactly are we?  Are we bicycle travelers or are we motorized cycle travelers?  I mean this as a serious question, I'm not just trying to ruffle feathers, I think that we all need to consider this issue. If e-bikes are to be included in the definition of who/what we are, where do you draw the line with respect to the e-bike's capability? How much electric boost is allowable before we consider that the bicycle is now a motorized cycle?  Why should any electric boost be acceptable for "cycle tourists" or "adventure cyclists?"

I've read many journals on this site, and I can relate to the adversity and challenges you all have faced on tour.  Heat, hills, humidity, storms, forest fire smoke, rain, sleet, hail - I read your adventures and I can relate them to my own.  But in the future if I read "a storm was coming so I increased the boost to hurry on to town," or "the day had been tiring so I upped the boost to get over the final pass so I could make it into camp before dark," I just don't think that falls into the same category of adventure.  I'm asking a serious question when I ask "Is that who we are now?" 

So some folks say they need an e-bike in order to do longer days on tour.  In other words "if I had a motor on this bike I could go further."  Well, yeah, sure you could.  But is that part of the definition of who we are?  Maybe you should just ride shorter days that you can handle without a motor.   Some folks say, "I can't keep up with the youngsters anymore so I need a motor on this bike."  Yeah, we all get older and it sucks to slow down with age - I'm there, I get it.  Personally, I keep up with the youngsters by getting up earlier than them and getting a headstart before the little snots even get out of bed.  But if that's not an option then just don't worry about keeping up with them - who wants to ride with them anyway, all that youthful sass and sexual energy just makes me sick to my stomach. So ride shorter days than they do, or ride longer days to end up at the same location.    Look, there really is no reason that someone who can ride a bike actually NEEDS an electric motor, but if you want to rationalize a justification for it then there are many you can invent.

E-bikes are hot items these days.  Bike stores sell them cause they don't want to miss out on the business opportunity.  ACA has developed some e-bike tours (or at least they allow e-bikes on some tours) because they too don't want to miss out on the financial opportunity (yes, I know ACA is a non-profit organization, but they employ a lot of folks and they can pay their folks more if they have more income).  E-bikes are here to stay, and when they replace a car that is a good thing.  But should e-bikes be considered part of who/what we are?

Again, since this is a controversial topic to many, I feel that I should add this note; I respect all your opinions and I realize that some (maybe a lot) of you will disagree with me. That's fine and I look forward to your thoughts regardless. Best wishes to all, whether you ride an e-bike or not!

I got interested in having an e-bike after I went to Germany while I was suffering from spinal stenosis which had started while I was on my 2018 summer tour. I needed to bike for an hour or two every day to get a mostly pain free day. That fall my wife  visited our kids and grand kids in southern Germany near Stuttgart and our tickets for that trip had been bought before my I'd developed spinal stenosis. 

I wasn't able to handle bringing a bike along - it was hard enough to just to travel with spinal stenosis! - so I arranged to use our kid's bikes for my daily rides. Since this was Germany in 2018, those bikes were e-bikes. One was a nice German city bike which my son-in-law had converted to an e-bike and the other was a high end Bosch e-bike. 

My riding was in the area near where they live and on quite hilly - Black Forest and all that - roads. Because of age, I would have had a hard time riding my regular touring bike on those roads and riding them on the e-bikes made it great fun! Note that in Germany e-bikes are quite common now so there was no social stigma associated with it. Also note in Germany e-bikes are restricted to 250 watt power output if you want to ride them on bike trails and the best riding in Germany is on those trails, so I still got a good workout on those bikes.

When I got back to the states, I investigated my options for conversion kits and choose to buy a TSDZ2 kit because it had torque sensing like the expensive Bosch bike. I did my first conversion while I was still having serious back problems - it was quite painful to do that work but I did it so I would be able to do my daily ride on the seriously hill roads in and around Asheville.

My e-bikes can only put out about 300 watts and the battery I carry stores less that 
400 watt-hours of energy. I can still sustain 100 to 150 watts of power output now which is less than half of what I could do 16 years ago when I was 60. The e-assist makes it possible for me tour on hilly routes. And, since I live in the Appalachian mountains and almost all of my US tours have either started or ended here, I need that assist!

when I was in my 50s I used to regularly  do 100+ mile days with a mile or more of climbing while touring fully loaded and riding 3000+ mile tours in a couple of months. Now I'm happy to be able, with assist, to do less than 100 km days with less than 1000 m of climbing. I'm still doing the majority of the work each day and I am pushing my limits just as I used to, but those limits have declined pretty much every year since I was 60.

I very much agree with Wayne, who I met on one of my summer tours when I was in my 50s,and whose ride reports I've enjoyed for more than two decades, and Scott whose ride reports I've enjoyed since I joined cycleblaze. The point of bicycle touring is to see new places and meet new people. By riding a bicycle carrying your stuff for long distances you can do both of these things in ways that simply aren't available to folks who don't do that. The fact that this is made possible by an electric motor powered by a battery that makes it physically less demanding to get up steep hills is irrelevant .

For me, thinking  that touring without assist somehow makes you a more accomplished bicycle tourist, is  completely missing what bicycle touring is all about.

Hi Dodie and everyone else.

Here is a simple solution for all.

If there is a particular type of journal that you disagree with, e-bike, sag wagon, fully supported tours without a pannier in sight  unfollow that author's journal and it does not come up in your daily feed.

Mike

An even simpler solution is for people to exercise some common civility and stop trying to force their views on others.  If you dò not want to read about sag wagons, local tours, people touring on tandem or trikes or ebikes or whatever, then Don't, but leave those that do want to alone.

Hi George. I'm one of the moderators on CycleBlaze and I'm going to remind you about rule #3 that you agreed to when you posted your comment:

"Avoid philosophical discussions about politics, religion, weapons, and helmets. Practical questions and comments about these topics as they relate to bicycle travel in a given part of the world are allowed. Trying to convince someone of the accuracy of your beliefs (or the inaccuracy of theirs) about these topics is not."

The OP (Leo) started a discussion about the practicalities of modifying his bicycle so he can continue to tour. Not everybody has expertise on this, but some of our members do. Those of us who don't glanced at the topic heading and then moved on. 

Your original intention of biting your tongue may have been the wiser impulse, because your post seems more belief-based than advisory. Perhaps we need to add e-bikes to the list of topics that have the capacity to heat up discussions but I would like to keep that list as brief as possible.  

I do have the option to remove posts that raise the heat unnecessarily and I have before. We are all entitled to our opinions but I'll say this: if you are here to instigate flaming you may have landed on the wrong website. 

Hi George -

I think I understand the question you’re asking, and my response/vote is “Yes, we are a community that includes people who tour on e-bikes”.

To me, the essence of bike touring is being out of a car and traveling at a human speed.    Folks on e-bikes fit right in there to me.

I want to see as many bike tourists out there as possible.  I don’t care about whatever form of assistance they’re using.  

That’s my 2 cents.

Best regards

Rich

I think e-bikes are an interesting topic to monitor because policy decisions are still evolving that affect how e-bikes can be used for touring.

Here in the US, nearly every multi-use path and mountain bike trail is signed "no motor vehicles". E-bikes are prohibited but few trails have strict enforcement.

That seems to be changing in the direction of allowing e-bikes on some trails. When I pedaled the Route of the Hiawatha trail in September 2019 they were allowing class 1 e-bikes for a trial period. Other trails surely had similar experiments, hoping that e-bikes can expand the local tourism economy.

Hi Wayne

Here in Australia we have adopted the European standards which limits ebikes to 25km/h about 16 mph and the thought of banning them from certain areas has never been mentioned. Nobody wishes to deter potential bike tourists from spending money in their areas.

AFAIK New Zealand has a 40 km/h limit but the tourist areas welcome e bikers just as in Oz.

Mike,

The "no motor vehicles" rule on U.S. multi-use paths is a legacy regulation that was enacted decades before e-bikes existed. Government policies are often slow to react to changing circumstances. I don't think there is widespread anti e-bike sentiment in the U.S.