Published in El Cuaderno de Joan Seguidor)

Today he called me to the store a man who, at 73, has rediscovered the bicycle. It is one of the organizers of the marches MTB most renowned in Catalonia, the Cabrerès. Mr. asked by a high capacity battery for motor bike with Bosch bought a couple of years ago, and who does not want the thing has finished telling me his life.

 

Jordi so called, has been cycling life but things age and a small heart ailment, recent years he had gradually abandoned his hobby. Until I discovered the electric mountain bike.

 

"It's fantastic! He rejoiced across the telefónico- thread. I can keep doing the same routes as before without worrying about mileage or how hard it will be uploaded. Exit Group, enjoy nature, breakfast with "colla" friend ... Now back to go cycling. And I'm not alone. In my group we are thirteen and let in electric bikes. The youngest is 70, and most eighty-something ".

 

Jordi radiated happiness. This man of unknown aspect and that just coincided with ever since many years ago-in Cabrerès lives a second youth thanks to his electric bike. And it's not the only one. Electric bikes are the solution for leisure or the daily transport of millions of people worldwide.

 

Allow a rider and Jordi, who because of age or a health problem (cardiovascular disease, knee injuries ...) had cornered his beloved, go bike riding. But it is also the solution for people who would go out with your partner and do not dare because they are weak, for those riders struggling to keep pace in a group, for executives who can not afford to get to the sweaty work, for which they live far from their workplace or have to face a journey with many ups, for those who have to carry a lot of weight ...

 

They get far the first Chinese-made electric bikes equipped with heavy and highly polluting lead batteries which began selling in our country fifteen or twenty years ago. Thanks to tremendous advances that have led central motor Bosch, who have followed Yamaha, Shimano or Brose, large manufacturers (Specialized, Trek, Lapierre, Cannondale or Merida, and in our country and Orbea BH) have finished betting on a subsegment which until recently was a minority but in countries like Germany or the Netherlands and represents the first billing.

 

Electric bicycles, pedal assistance, or as the ebikes want to call, are here to stay.

 

But these engines "pull" ?, I often ask in the shop. And I tend to always explain the same. "Look, this engine is rated at 250 watts. In its heyday, legs Indurain developed a power of 500 watts, you need to upload any port of the Alps or the Pyrenees more than twenty per hour. As with the 250-watt motor and what you throw at it, you'll go up anywhere. "

 

Of course, not everyone believes. "At the end of the day, what do I will have it, you want to sell the bike," some will say. No problem. Let them test the bike or rent it. And I'm waiting quietly to see him arrive with a smile from ear to ear etched on his face.

 

"But this is not cycling," I discussed the recalcitrant purists. And partly I agree with them. The ebikes represent a different way of doing cycling whom we had known. "But I tell you -Les cycling and this is before you have a bicycle."

 

And I give the example of skiing. "Or perhaps the downhill skiing is also not ski? Most skiers use a mechanical up the mountain so you can make as many drops as you like lifts. Because according to your logic would be the only true ski the mountain, the bold the whole mountain is pulled up to a summit walk to enjoy a single drop at the end of the day. Look, now there is another type of cycling that helps you back up, you decide whether more or less, and thus arrive more rested home, can make longer routes or enjoy further declines. "

 

I said. We like more or we like less, but electric bikes are here to stay, and thanks to its ease of access and technological advances to come, will expand the range of users to limits that right now nobody can even imagine.