pink poodle
気が狂っている男
You'd look pretty happy too if you were being paid a fair whack of $$$ to ride a bike for work.
You're right. He wouldn't be meeting a contractual obligation here at all...just pure and unbiased opinions like those offered by John Laws through his golden microphone in support of Telstra or Michael Jordan's love of Nike footwear.
Good. I look forward to similar actions transpiring here, where we tend to have a much more conservative approach to such things. I'm seeing a lot of the high end pedal assist bikes on the local trails, and as anyone who has ridden there knows they are the flattest boring trails in NSW. If you really need that assistance to make the piss all climb and cut an extra couple of laps for a ride...that's just fucking wierd. On trail these things do hammer. Just recently one of the local shredders was on his mum's e-bike heading to the trails along the same stretch of mostly flat cycleway as me. There was no way I could have kept up with him for the full stretch of cycleway. Sure we rendezvoused at the exact moment I was finishing about 6km of riding along the highway up a slight Hill and he was coming down the hill...but that wouldn't have made a difference. Another e-bike rider told me he rides to the trails from home (after I made a bit of a jest about how it must be relieving on the mammoth glenrock lagoon climbs) as justification of ownership and it was better than driving there. He also told me where he lives which is well within 1km of the trail head and very close to a mid trail access point. Anyway my point here was just that these rigs pump along at a pace that is much faster than most regular riders despite the no throttle hype. I have witnessed a number of mongs cornering poorly, skidding unnecessarily, and other similar wear and tear inducing techniques that wouldn't be as prevalent if they were on a regular bike. As someone who gets involved in trail maintenance from time to time this passes me off as the turn out of fat middle aged e-bike riders is about 0/1000000000000000 volunteers. If your only reason for e-biking is you can't otherwise ride I could be convinced, but if that barrier is your huge gut and arse...
But all of that is of minor concern in the bigger picture. The bigger issue I come across is fuckwits, morons, and douche bags riding these things on crowded shared paths. I live exceptionally close to a popular cycleway, I ride to work or the shops along it, I ride it recreationally, I take my nephews/niece/friend'skids on it, I fish at a few different spots along it, I drink coffee beside it as well. It is fair to say I spend a good % of my time along this damn thing. The sad truth here is that Newcastle doesn't have a lot of cycleway or shared path and with the amount of construction work currently going on in the "city" it is regularly quite congested. As the availability of e-bikes has grown I have seen plenty of people riding them irresponsibly along this pathway. It is dangerous and will not be of benefit to the wider cycling community.
It will also potentially have great benefit in building these up as a viable transport alternative. By formalising it all this may birth a low power e-bike throttle driven industry that reduces the number of cars and motorcycles on the roads, which can only he a good thing. Sure there are already e-motor bikes, but there's probably plenty of people that want something that is more like a bicycle they don't have to pedal, as evidenced by the popularity of the current varieties.
There was an explosion of throttle and pedal powered bikes around here about 10-15 years ago. The most common looked like a vesper and were of particular popularity with house-os and drug runners. They became such a pest that they were specifically banned, sending one local bike shop under at the time. However with the proper planning this mode of transport could become a viable future option.
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