My E-Bike: A Beautiful Love Story

A few years ago I wrote about my e-bike and how much I liked it. The main reason I cited was that it makes biking easier and less stressful for me. I don’t have to worry about steep hills or getting started quickly when I’m in busy traffic situations, plus having bike baskets (panniers) makes it easy to carry stuff. So you can read that, but I’ve been thinking that I need to write about the e-bike again. Because my love for it just keeps growing deeper and stronger.

I’ve been biking a lot lately, and I love it so very much. And I realized that I’ve come up with a bunch of new reasons to love it. The most compelling reason: it makes it easy and fun to go places, and to check things out casually. When it comes to big community events like Schenectady’s Holiday Parade, Schenectady SummerNight, and free concerts at different locations, I would often find myself thinking, “Aw, I should go. . . .” and then I wouldn’t be sure if it would be worth the trouble of getting up, driving to the location, finding parking, and then schlepping over from my car to the event. I don’t love driving and I hate looking for parking, and for bigger events, it’s more daunting because there are likely to be road closures and crowds. And my couch is so comfortable!

But I already know that I enjoy riding my e-bike, so if I hear about something vaguely interesting, I can just ride my bike over to check it out. If it looks interesting, I can park and stay, and if it doesn’t, I’ll just keep pedaling.

For example, last weekend, Cute W and I biked downtown to check out Schenectady SummerNight. This event is huge, and it was hot, so it was exactly the sort of event that, in my mind, might feel like it’s not quite worth the hassle. But on the bikes it was easy to get in and out, and we ran into some old friends, so we were glad we went. On Sunday night, while Cute W was heading to soccer, I biked over to Central Park to check out the first Music Haven concert of the summer. Red Barat was super-fun, and I ended up parking and dancing for a while.

This weekend, Cute W and I were inspired by the cooler, beautiful weather to take a bike ride to eat at the Manhattan Exchange‘s patio for dinner on Friday night. We stopped to watch a band playing at Jay Square park as part of Art Night Schenectady before dinner, and we appreciated the post-meal pedaling because those burgers are huge. On Saturday, I biked down to the Stockade StreetFest, where I impulse-bought this cute little cork cross body bag from one of the vendors. This morning I biked down to morning outdoor yoga with Inner Bliss. Now, obviously, this is the kind of fantastic line-up that is much more difficult to achieve if you’re not an Empty Nester like we are now. But even without conflicting kids’ activities, I don’t think I’d have done all that stuff without the ease of my e-bike to help me get back up that hill from downtown Schenectady.

Recently I’ve also been taking long bike rides because it’s felt too hot to take walks. With the heat and humidly, it’s been pretty unpleasant to walk, even in the morning. The joy of the bike is that you get a breeze! And we’re lucky to have so many bike paths around us. Recently I took a long ride and it was so lovely that I couldn’t restrain myself from taking some photos along the way.

If you’re riding along State Street where you’re about to head over the Western Gateway Bridge to Scotia, you can stick to the bike path and it will take you along Gateway Park.

That’s also a place where you can get into the river for kayaking, as I’ve mentioned before.

Keep riding, and you’ll see the little Fitness Court.

And you can basically keep going on and on, with a lot of fun art from CREATE Community Studios along the way.

It’s a lovely hot-weather activity, because it’s shady, and the bike means a breeze. If you are not going to run out and get an e-bike, of course you can just use a regular bike, and if you’re nervous about riding your bike in downtown Schenectady, you can park next to Gateway Park and start from there. But it is much easier to just go further and faster with your e-bike.

This long ride along the bike path made me realize something else about the e-bike: it makes me feel safer when I am alone. I have had enough sketchy encounters that I am reluctant to take a very long walk or bike ride on an isolated path. But with the e-bike, I feel much more confident that I can outpace any potential bad guys.

And of course, biking instead of driving is good for the planet. I’ve taken my bike on errands to the grocery, library, post office, hardware store, eye doctor, dentist, and hair salon. I ride my bike to the JCC for Zumba and to yoga wherever I happen to be doing it. It saves wear and tear on my car, which is great because the car is paid off, and we don’t want to acquire a new car payment until we’re done paying for college if we can help it.

And if you’re thinking of buying an e-bike, Cute W recently shared a link to this bike on Facebook and said, “If anyone in the Capital District is interested in an excellent e-bike, this Gazelle T10 is an incredible deal. Brand new, Bosch mid-drive motor, high end Shimano components, rear rack, and a cafe lock. Normally $4,000. Only $2,000. I bought my Gazelle from Covered Bridge. Excellent service. I love my Gazelle Medeo T10 (almost 10,000 miles on it). I can’t recommend Covered Bridge Electric Bikes enough.” This isn’t my bike–mine was cheaper and has since been discontinued, but there are other cheaper ones out there. Really. It’s so great.