Happy Feet

Neil, I respect your opinion in regards to your site but it is still just an opinion. Should it (or anyone's) have the right to silence a discussion that other people may want to engage in? You may not consider Ebike touring to be legit (whatever that means really) but others do, so who gets to decide that. On your site, you do of course, but unless the owners of this site say otherwise it appears to be a valid topic.

I do think posting into a discussion to simply say again and again you don't believe in it's validity and posting inflammatory stuff just to poke the bear and get it locked is trolling. I don't much like bmx biking (I think it looks a bit silly). That's my opinion. But if I go to the bmx sub forum and keep posting into threads telling others I think bmx bikes look silly I would be called a troll. If I have no use for them I don't really need to be in those threads do I.

I rarely see a discussion here regarding how to get the human legs in better shape for better touring efficiency, or discussions about optimized nutrition, stretching properly, post ride muscle rolling etc... just lots of questions about how one can use technology to make touring easier via sprocket/crank sizing. Perhaps, if there was a real emphasis on developing and maintaining real human strength and endurance for touring there could be a better argument for E bikes diminishing something. All I've seen so far is how E bikes have helped others enjoy bicycle touring. Until E bikes interfere with my enjoyment of touring I don't get the objection. I don't get my ego strokes by boasting about what a great bicycle rider I am.

And I think that gets to the nub of this discussion: Some people do get their ego strokes from associating themselves as "bicyclists" and appear to see E bikes as diluting their image by association. So they would exclude discussion or inclusion in order to prop up their own self image (unless of course they own stock in the world wide manual bike industry and are worried about pricing plummeting).

All this talk about slippery slopes and lost meaning baffles me. It would appear that some see bicycling touring as a badge of honour or something - kind of a "I did it all with my own muscles" type of thing. I don't feel that and just see a bike as the mode of transport. I also don't get all defensive about my mini van. And it's not like anyone is trying to be deceptive about what they are doing. Everybody knows what an E bike is when people talk about E bike touring.

I guess the fundamental question is: Who owns the rights to bicycle touring? The answer is - no one. On your site you own the right to decide discussion about it and the owners of this site own the right to discussion here, but no particular member owns the right to shut down a thread just because they don't like the content.

Anyway, keep fighting the good fight. Not letting the able bodied be browbeaten by the disabled into allowing them to discuss their own mode of bicycling touring is a worthy effort no doubt. You know, I remember a discussion here not too long ago where you were getting raked over the coals a bit for deriving your income from donations made by other bike tourists and I pretty well sided with your positioning but that statement makes you sound like a bit of jerk.