How I went from an e-bike hater to a believer

A wise person once observed that cycling in my neighborhood in Seattle is like going uphill both ways. It’s the absolute truth. My house? On a hill. The business district I want to get to? On a different hill. The route to the coffee shop? Hills galore. And inevitably, as I’d grind through another steep climb, swearing under my breath, I’d hear an electric motor whir behind me.

Someone on an e-bike — usually one of the few Lime bikes in the city not thrown onto the middle of a sidewalk — would tear past me. Not sweating and red-faced. Not cursing the existence of hills. They might not even be pedaling! The nerve, I’d think. I swore them all off as my enemies — the bikes, the people riding them, their whole deal. But because time makes fools of us all, I bought an e-bike last month and I can’t get enough of it.

I can’t even fully blame my 4-year-old, though it is partially his fault. We inherited a pop-up bike trailer from some friends and I hitched it to my bike, with visions of family rides in my head. On a trial run we made it through the park just fine, but the final hill to get back home did me in. I thought I was going to barf, or die, and I walked it off feeling lightheaded and seeing stars. Not the relaxed family ride I had hoped for.

The bike trailer proved too much for my husband, too. He towed it once all the way up the many hills on our route home from downtown and declared that once was enough. Our rides as a crew were limited to a single destination, a perfectly lovely corner store we could get to and from without somebody feeling like they were about to pass out at the end of the trip. It was fine, but we craved more freedom.

Meanwhile, out on my solo trips around town I was seemingly surrounded by people on e-bikes. And they weren’t all 20-somethings riding Lime bikes recklessly through traffic. Plenty of them were people my age, with one or two kids on the back, pedaling comfortably along the portside trail. They looked at ease, happy to be out in the fresh air together. And there was something else going on — they looked like they were having fun.

At least part of my e-bike hatred came from self-righteousness. A belief that because I was pedaling myself up a hill under my own power, I was more deserving of… well, I’m not quite sure, actually. Recognition? A cookie? It didn’t matter. I was working hard at something, and other people were taking a shortcut. Which is bad, right? You don’t go to the gym because it’s fun. You don’t eat kale because it’s fun. Doing that stuff sucks; the point is to suffer and feel better about yourself afterward.

I had to reexamine my beliefs when I rented an e-bike on vacation and confirmed what I’d suspected deep down: riding an e-bike is fun as hell. I’d wanted to borrow a regular bike, but the only bikes with child seats (a requirement) at the rental house were e-bikes. We set out on a multigenerational family bike ride through rural Michigan, my kiddo on the back of my e-bike. A confirmed city kid, he screamed with delight every time we saw a cow or a horse. He was comfortable enough to fall asleep on the way back, too. Mom tested, kid approved.

That’s when it dawned on me: maybe you can ride a regular bike and still enjoy riding an e-bike, too. Maybe they aren’t opposing forces. Maybe you can like two things at once. Buying an e-bike doesn’t mean I have to hand over my regular bike. Why not both? That’s the $1,600 question that landed me on a test drive at the Rad Power Bikes showroom in Ballard. We left with two bikes: one RadRunner in a box, ready to be assembled, and a miniature BMX bike toy that one of the employees gave my son. Rad knows its audience.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about my e-bike bias, often while riding my new e-bike, which I do nearly every day now. For starters, the puritanical belief that everyone on a bike must suffer as I do is bullshit. “It’s actually okay to do something just because it’s fun” is a concept we struggle with in our culture sometimes. Not to mention the ways an e-bike makes cycling accessible to people of different abilities. I love a long ride on my regular bike, and sure, I love the feeling that comes with conquering a hill. But some people are just trying to get around, you know? Being annoyed with people on e-bikes is like jogging down a sidewalk and being annoyed at people out for a walk.

And the thing is, I actually ride way more now that the e-bike is an option. I take it places that I would have considered off-limits to my regular bike. It doesn’t replace bike trips, as one of my colleagues observed. It replaces car trips. To that end, I got a massive basket for the front, which I’ve used to carry everything from farmers market hauls to a bulky camera tripod. It rules.

The e-bike has greatly expanded our family ride options, too. We rode onto the Bainbridge Island ferry on a recent weekend. As we were waiting at the Bainbridge terminal for the ferry back home, an attendant looked at the dozen or so of us with our bikes parked, milling around before boarding started. It was roughly a 50/50 split between ebikes and regular bikes. My kid was one of at least six, all with their adorable little dinosaur and monster helmets strapped on. “Are you all one group?” he asked. I shook my head no. But in a way, yeah. We’re all out here together, actually.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge