Stop bleeping at me! And winking….I think it’s W R O N G ….

2manyoranges

2manyoranges

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I was following Ant through some singletrack recently and quite frankly the beeping from his Garmin was disturbing the Z E N of the moment. Beep! We‘ve climbed a bit. Beep! We’ve stopped momentarily. Beep! We‘ve hit a waymark. Er…can you turn it off please.

And then some e-bikes arrived and everything was beeping, winking and generally trying to communicate the whole time. Sitting on a very modern hardtail, with nothing making irritating sounds or emitting light, and no battery anywhere on the bike, I felt as though I am on a different path in terms of what mountain-biking actually means…

These guys had bikes festooned with electronics, some of them non-rechargeable. Disposable batteries are a nightmare for the environment, and while I know that the beans I ate to give me the power to ascend also have a carbon footprint, I was a bit gobsmacked at the sheer size of the battery on these bikes and the fact that the guys had an equally huge and heavy spare battery in their backpacks.

Now, Mike K is on the case, and what he says is interesting….

www.pinkbike.com

Opinion: How Many Batteries Does a Mountain Bike Really Need? - Pinkbike

Zero’s the obvious answer, isn’t it?
www.pinkbike.com www.pinkbike.com
 
Makes you wonder what the trend will be: will there come a time when slower less advanced ‘push bikes’ have to be separated from proper motorised mountain bikes? - for their own safety, natch. It might start with separate trails then, different centres; then we’ll need to develop separate cultures of pushers vs ebbers (e bikers) ........
 
I sometimes wonder whether it boils down to a deep-seated feeling of entitlement with people, conscious or not.

It's as if we are always trying to design out the challenging aspects (to any given activity), when, often, these challenges make up a large part of what makes a task enjoyable.

"Happy to leave my ivory tower to go out on a bike ride, but I really must insist that my machine climbs the hills for me and navigates"

Same with driving. "Happy to sit in my warm, quiet, powerful and comfy car to get to X, but only if my car parallel parks for me when we get there"
 
Goodness Joe-R I think that’s right. At the bottom of all this for me is my pulse rate (the idea is to keep my body healthy) and a sense of place (I want to be out in the wild). That feels like a very different sense of motivation to what you rightly describe….
 
I don't necessarily mind tech aids; I use OS maps on the phone, track rides (notifications silenced) for useless but interesting data on speed, HR etc., and can see that an e-bike could be on the menu in future years as a means for actually being able to get out/further in the hills.

For me the point is that the ride is, as said, about physical exertion in harness with (silent) clever engineering, being in the filth and fresh air, and - particulalry for me - not doing or thinking about anything else for that time. Sort of why I love riding rigid - every root or divot needs due attention, which is fun and challenging of itself and in taking up all my limited bandwidth it pushes all the life/work sh!t out of my head. Sometimes it even stays out/becomes less sh!tty in the afterglow/perspective of a tidy ride!
 
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