Originally Posted by
jefnvk
So, it is not contortion to suggest that there are fewer differences between an ebike and a fully dressed Harley or a BMW GS than a touring bike and the exact same frame with a pedal assist motor on it?
You share 50% of your DNA with a banana. Does that mean we're all fruit?
At the end of the day, on his tour he used a non-bike method to get around. According to the oh so helpful advice I've heard here, he either needs to HTFU or stop calling his tour a bike tour, because he couldn't do what was required under his own power. He should have just missed the TdF if calling it a bike tour is what he wants to do, or planned better or took more tim. Note, this is not my personal opinion, but it is utterly hypocritical to bash others that for whatever reasons they think they need an ebike while you and others you support ride a friggin' train!
You use other forms of transportation to get to and from your tour. That doesn't detract from or invalidate the tour you do, whatever you want to call it. The transportation you choose to take around the tour is separate from the tour itself. I did a coast to coast tour, and then I took a train home from Oregon to NYC. Does that mean I didn't do a bicycle tour? No. But if I had done the tour on a motorbike, then THAT would mean I didn't do a bicycle tour. I feel silly having to explain this, but you're trying to make it into an issue to here we are.
I don't have much time for slippery slope arguments. They are used when someone can't argue the issue int he present. If we ever get to the point where people on full out mopeds, with wrist throttles and no pedaling required, are calling themselves bike tourists, maybe I'll jump on board with your argument. We aren't.
The whole point is that once you are at that point, then it'll be too late to go back. See also: Boiling the frog. The whole point of considering "slippery slope" scenarios is that you are trying to think ahead to what will happen if we continue down a certain course. You try to stop yourself before you get into trouble. I am saying something that is actually very simple: Technology has a way of improving over time, and so I can envisage a point where the e-bike has improved to such a level whereby it can provide most, if not all of the work. Then we would be at the point where people would be talking about going on a "bicycle tour" where they are not actually having to do any pedaling at all. Maybe you're ok with this idea, but I care about definitions and I don't think that is what "bicycle touring" is supposed to be about. It would be much clearer if we simply said that "bicycle touring" means no motors, and if people want to discuss e-bikes or e-assist or whatever you want to call it, then go do that on the appropriate forum.
I likewise have little time for people who choose to quell discussion on topics they don't like by name calling and general hatred until it gets shut down, instead of doing the sensible thing and ignoring the thread. If this is something that is truly threatening to you, to the point where you'll argue on it to get the threads closed, it speaks more to you being the one with an issue than anyone riding an ebike.
Disagreement is not hatred. We are arguing about a categorization issue, whether or not certain discussions belong in this forum or over on the e-bike forum. Telling people to "just ignore it" is akin to spammers telling us to "just ignore" their junk in our inbox. It is not harmless, it increases the noise level and decreases the usefulness of the forum to those of us who come here for focused discussions. Not every thread has a descriptive subject, so often you have to click down before you really know what the discussion is about (and also, some discussions go off the original point of the thread starter). So if the signal to noise ratio decreases due to more discussions about motorized travel here in this forum that is supposed to be about non-motorized bicycle touring, then that is a negative result in my book.
I don't understand how starting a new forum so people who hate something don't have to see it. It seems far easier for those people to grow up, than to have everything fragmented down to such specificity that you have two active users agreeing with one another in each of your hundreds of sub forums.
Hate... grow up... these are not helpful. Nobody is hating, and saying people who disagree with you are children is not a good way to win an argument.
Also, I don't think we would be talking about fragmentation into hundreds of sub-forums. With the dichotomy between "motors" and "no motors", there would really just be two branches. Which we already have. I see no reason why anybody on the e-bike forum would object to talk about touring on an e-bike there, so I don't believe any further sub-forums would be necessary.
Neil