Originally Posted by
tandempower
It's nice when you can just spend 10 minutes walking up a hill instead of a long gradual slope, i.e. if you're trying to have an easy commute, that is.
There is definitely something to that. Some of the hills I have to tackle on the way home from church are much like that - I can take 5 minutes to walk the worst of it and the rest is pretty enjoyable. (BTW, I must say I'm glad I took everyone's advice on trading my single speed in for something geared).
As it turns out, I found the problem with my e-bike (there was another connector inside of the battery compartment of which I knew nothing and it would seem to have come partway disconnected). So I won't be testing myself on those hills quite so soon, which perhaps is just as well as my unpowered ride to pick up the work van in the summer heat was making me realize that doing the entire commute unpowered might be a bit much just yet.
However, in spite of putting the "test ride" off, I have decided to start doing more of the hill on a lower power assist mode to give my legs more of a workout. As much as it is nice to have the option of power assist, I eventually want to get to the place where I don't need to rely on it. Though, on the other hand, I figure that (at least for the time being) I'm not really worse off relying on bicycle power assist technology than relying on automobile technology.