Originally Posted by
elcruxio
Uh oh...
You took a train? Why are you posting on a bicycle touring forum instead of interrail or similiar. By many definitions presented here (including yours) you're not bicycle touring at all.
I don't think anybody has ever claimed that getting a train ride for some portion of your bicycle tour means you're somehow "not on a bicycle tour". Out of many thousands of tour journals over on crazyguyonabike, just about everybody takes a car, train, plane or boat ride at some point. It's fine. As long as the main mode of travel is using your bicycle, then it's a bicycle tour. Where that line is, in terms of purity, is up to you, and I think most people are comfortable with that, assuming good faith.
I think most people also have an intuitive understanding that bicycles aren't supposed to have motors. At a gut level, disabilities aside, it just feels like cheating. You're supposed to do the pedaling yourself. It's just how it is.
If you argue that having a motor is the same as not having one, then what you end up with is a meaningless definition for "cycling". As the motors and batteries get better, the line between "assist" and "motorbike" will get more and more blurry, until you end up with the absurd conclusion that bicycles are conceptually no different from motorbikes.
To be clear, once again, I am not against e-bikes or e-assist in concept. What I, and some others here are saying in different ways, is that we don't feel that motorized bikes belong here under "bicycle touring". While there are some areas of overlap, e.g. camping, cooking, clothing etc, those aspects can very well be discussed without bringing up the fact that you are traveling using a motorized bike. So those discussions can very well happen here without any conflict. But if the main topic of the discussion is the e-bike aspect, then there is a separate e-bike forum for that.
It should be obvious by now that many people take issue with motors intruding into this particular forum. Trying to pretend that this contention is just going to go away will only guarantee more train wrecks like this one. The only way to avoid these conflicts is to avoid the subject, much like avoiding debating helmets, religion, politics, guns etc. Keep the e-bike discussions on the e-bike forum, where they belong. JMHO, of course.
Neil