You May Have 3 Kids, But Do You Really Need A Van Or SUV?

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I’m riding 12-20 miles on my e-bike nearly every day, year-around in northern Utah, southern Utah, and northern Wisconsin. Here in Lindon, Utah, I do one of the following. 1) I’m on the beautiful blacktop 20-mile-long (separate from streets) Murdock Bike Trail that goes across my back property line. 2) on the Provo River Parkway (Bike Trail) that goes up Provo Canyon (on the old Heber Creeper Railroad roadbed) and down through Provo to the Utah Lake Marina. 3) the Lindon Heritage trail that goes east up to mountain trails in the foothills of 11,752 ft Mount Timpanogos and west down through Lindon past the power plant to the Lindon Marina on Utah Lake. 4) To Art Dye Park or American Fork Canyon and the Bonneville Shoreline Trail via the Murdock Canal Trail. At almost 85 years, this is how I stay in shape when I’m not snow skiing or water skiing.

I also use my e-bike for the following errands: 1) to pick up prescriptions at Walgreens, 1.7 miles away, 2) to go to US Bank in Smiths Market 2.6 miles away, 3) to pickup those few grocery items that my wife forgot to get at Walmart 2.7 miles away (I don’t have saddlebags so I wear a small pack), 4) to go to the VASA Fitness gym 1.5 miles away to work out, or 5) to stop at Mama Chu’s Mexican Restaurant 2.8 miles away on the Murdock Trail para una enchilada de pollo ala carte con tortilla de harina. These are all trips where I would otherwise need to drive a car. In this article I show others that I have met out on the trails that could also be running errands like me.

How about 4 kids? Gas-powered and probably not legal in the US.

Mom and 2 kids on an e-bike. I see this kind of thing all the time.

If you are a coordinated skateboarder, you could be out on your One-Wheel (see below). I even saw someone the other day riding one on a city street. Or you could be on a motorized skateboard or scooter, also shown below.

Electric scooters have become an alternative method of transportation for adults and children. The little girl riding down the sidewalk on her scooter is going to school or to visit a friend and is saving her mom a trip in the family van. Private and rental scooters have become ubiquitous in cities and are saving numerous private vehicle, Uber, and taxi trips. High-powered electric bikes with no pedals and mini mopeds as shown in the photo below have also become a means of transportation, but are illegal on bike trails. However, with nonexistent enforcement in most places, people are using them anyway. The second photo below shows e-scooters and bikes at an elementary school bike rack (on the right) and a boy riding his e-scooter on a bike trail (on the left).

You want to get out on the bike trail or run an errand but can’t balance a 2-wheeler any more? No problem.

Your legs don’t work anymore but your arms do? Still no problem!

Paraplegic? Now you can still get out on the bike trail or run that errand.

Conventional unpowered (on two ~ 24” wheels) bikes with pneumatic tires were a travel revolution when they came into use over 100 years ago. Bikes with 3-speed gears, and later derailleurs with up to 30+ gears, made even steep hills possible for athletic riders. However, with the invention of high-performance lithium-ion electric batteries, first for cell phones and laptop computers 25 years ago, new alternatives for personal transportation have exploded, as you can see above.

In my family, on the Christmas after your 10^th birthday you got a one-speed full sized Schwinn bike direct from the factory courtesy of my dad’s “friend” Mr. Schwinn. I rode that bike to school all the way through high school. For 12 years in undergraduate school and then in a PhD program at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, I rode a 10-speed Schwinn road bike. During my 30-year career at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center living near Annapolis, I bought a 21-speed mountain bike, but rode very little because the local roads were not safe and Goddard was a 45-minute trip by car. Once we had our lake house in northern Wisconsin and our retirement house on a bike trail in Utah, I started daily rides of 12-20 miles. In 2010, I got a good deal on the latest technology Specialized road bike, with a 7-speed derailleur in back and a 2-speed in front. The shift levers were integrated into the brake levers as you see in the photo below. From the mail order house Bikes Direct, I finally bought the ultimate road bike at the time, which had a lightweight carbon-fiber frame and electric shifting mechanism. Both bikes still had caliper brakes, but all high-quality bikes now have hydraulic disk brakes.

I bought my first e-bike in 2014, which was basically a gravel road bike made by Emotion. In 2018, I bought a used e-bike that would change my life. It was the Bulls full suspension e-bike that you see in the top photo. In 2017, I had an open book fracture of my pelvis doing trick waterskiing. It left me with compromised balance, and at age 78 I no longer had the endurance of a younger person. For an unknown reason, I can still balance on a 2-wheel bike. The full suspension mountain bike allowed me to ride easily off-road for the first time, and the motor in the e-bike made up for my lack of endurance. Now at age 85, my world is much smaller than when I was younger. There is a long list of athletic things I did as a younger person that I can’t do anymore. For example, I was a national water ski trick champion, but I can’t do water ski tricks anymore. I was a snow ski instructor, but my snow skiing skills are marginal now. However, I feel like a 20-year-old on my mountain e-bike.

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