electric bike in Amish country.

pnop

Active Member
Something I found interesting. I was in Amish Country (in Ohio) this past weekend and the Amish were riding electric bikes all over the place. Saw a family of five all on electric bikes.

Just something I found interesting.
 
Something I found interesting. I was in Amish Country (in Ohio) this past weekend and the Amish were riding electric bikes all over the place. Saw a family of five all on electric bikes.

Just something I found interesting.

Probably Mennonites, not Amish. No way Amish are toodling around on ebikes.
 
Saw one man in Clark county wearing the straw hat but riding an electric bike. Some Amish bought a property a half mile north of my summer camp.
 
I have Amish and Mennonite neighbors. I'd bet it was Mennonite too. If you don't live amongst Anabaptists it can be difficult to tell the difference. Amish here in PA won't even ride bicycles with pedals and gears. They ride scooter bikes like this.

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Mennonite drive cars, yet dress similar to Amish. Straw hats, men have beards. It's a little easier to tell the difference between Amish women and Mennonite women by their clothing. For the most part it's like telling the difference between a Catholic and a Lutheran.
 
Something I found interesting. I was in Amish Country (in Ohio) this past weekend and the Amish were riding electric bikes all over the place. Saw a family of five all on electric bikes.

Just something I found interesting.
I have not seen any ebikes yet, but have frequently seen the Amish riding horse drawn buggies pulling fishing boats with 20hp outboards on them.
 
On the farm, Amish use a lot of modern tools. Solar powered electric fences, Dewalt battery tools. The Amish dairy farm just 1/8 mile from me has a new dairy barn with oil heat and mechanized milking parlor. I watched it being built a couple years ago, as the dirt road I enjoy on my ebike goes right through the middle of the farm. They don't have those modern conveniences in the house.

Transportation is a very different thing. Modern transportation takes the family away. Makes the community less close. Exposes too much of the outside world. Any conveyance not human powered has to have steel wheels, like the steel bands on their buggies and tractors with steel wheels. I see these on a regular basis.

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Amish transportation

 
Something I found interesting. I was in Amish Country (in Ohio) this past weekend and the Amish were riding electric bikes all over the place. Saw a family of five all on electric bikes.

Just something I found interesting.

I also heard from a very reliable source that an E-bike dealer in Ohio sold 400+ E-bikes to the Amish community. They ordered something like 200 Magnum bikes and was sold in few weeks.
So, it is very much possible.
 
Different congregations have different elders. Hence there may be different rules. We have people named Stolfuss around here, but this isn't Lancaster cty. Pennsylvania. The people in the straw hats and bonnets near my summer camp do take their one horse buggies out for a ride in the cool of the evening.
 
Different congregations have different elders. Hence there may be different rules. We have people named Stolfuss around here, but this isn't Lancaster cty. Pennsylvania. The people in the straw hats and bonnets near my summer camp do take their one horse buggies out for a ride in the cool of the evening.

Regional variation is a reasonable hypothesis, but I’d still be very surprised to bump into the e-biking Amish.

Besides, we need to maintain the horse-and-buggy perception to keep those nice wide shoulders.
 
Central. Sugarcreek area.

A little bit of research reveals that Holmes County, OH has one of the highest rates of acceptance of mechanical bikes by its Amish community, which in and of itself is quite interesting.
 
Makes me wonder how long before Mennonites and Amish get together and come up with their own version of Men-Ami e-bike .
 
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