Carl Decker Journal: eOtter

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from Carl Decker’s recent blog about racing “acoustic” in the e-bike race at the Sea Otter Classic.

I was hoping one would short out and cause a grass fire. I’d capture it on my GoPro and the resulting YouTube video would go viral. The whole conflagration would set the Electric Mountain Bike Movement back a decade. A small, but shameful part of me even had the notion that a person — okay, an arsonist — might light a fire somewhere on the Sea Otter e-bike race course during the event. It wouldn’t even have to be traced back to an e-bike. The fact that it “might have been caused by an e-bike” in the closely watched crucible of the First E-bike Race in America might have been enough. It would have been risky. Some people might have been hurt. But would it have been for the greater good?

Such was my disdain for eMTBs.

Loathing. Irrational and deep.

And, like many of my “Serious Mountain Biker” friends who feel similarly, I couldn’t really tell you why.

At the Sea Otter Classic this year, I stiffened like a Mennonite in a Best Buy when I was walking through the expo area. It was there that I saw a guy in an e-bike booth handing a six-foot check for $5,000 over to a trail advocacy group. A sizable crowd was applauding. My Spidey sense tingled. I walked away wide-eyed. What the hell is wrong with them? What the hell is wrong with me?

I love bicycles. I love motorcycles. If this is the silent, smokeless love-child of these two wondrous instruments of fun and adventure, why do they roust the curmudgeon in me? If an e-bike looks like a bike, goes the same speed as a bike, has the same trail impact as a bike, and is as free of smoke and noise as a bike, then maybe I need to just accept them as a part of my bicycle riding experience, like Strava, headphones, selfie-sticks, mid-ride cellphone calls, and other benignly irksome technological advancements that have become de rigueur on the trails. Have these trifles made riding bikes in the woods any less …

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