In praise of electric bikes

My neurologist encourages minimum medicine plus maximum exercise for my Parkinson’s Disease.  I’ve always been a bit sporty and have been mainly happy to concur, especially as I know it really does make me feel better.  The trouble is if I am feeling decidedly iffy it’s quite hard to motivate myself to do it.  My main strategies for overcoming this are my activity tracker wristband on which I set and monitor my target daily steps and my long suffering partner who boots me out the door!

Being an Aquarian I love gadgets.  This, together with my advancing years and the hilly area in which I live has resulted in me buying an electric bike about six months ago and I love it.  I have the cheapest, lightest, most basic one we could find.  Most days find me purring around the countryside exploring new routes – I even have our old Tom Tom strapped to the handlebars.  Here in France it is illegal to use the throttle – not that I want to as I like pedalling.  The battery gives a bit of a boost and I can pedal up the steepest hills.  Admittedly it doesn’t go very fast but I don’t care!  It causes quite a bit of interest as I sail up hills as it looks just like an ordinary bike.  My keen cyclist son says its like being overtaken by a sewing machine!  Cows and horses in fields sometimes scatter in alarm as I whoosh by but those on my usual routes just ignore me and munch on contentedly.

I think they are really catching on here.  We bought mine in England because it was so much cheaper but I notice many more are now in the shops.  In Nice we found a small street where all the shops were electric bike shops.  Here a scheme has just started to encourage people to use them by giving a free fortnights trial with an electric bike so I’m hoping my friend and neighbour may give it a go and come and join me!

---