New (old) guy

[Saratoga Dave]

Former touring bike rider of many years, used to do 40-60 mile rides all the time, much shorter rides with my wife. For one reason or another, after moving and job changes, the bikes have hung in the garage for the past four or five years until I recently discovered to my dismay that I was turning 65, had gained lots of weight, had knee surgery, and once I got the thing down again learned that things called Hills now apparently exist.

We've been out several times of late and while I still dearly love that Cannondale T400 bike, the ship has to a great extent sailed on the kind of riding I used to do... and my wife particularly is not interested in anything with any altitude changes. She's had breast cancer surgery, carpal tunnel surgery, and while she'd love to ride as a general thing, she thinks enough is enough.

So I have been researching ebikes since becoming really aware of it through my Tesla interest (Model 3 reserved in a couple of years) along with everything else electric powered. Ebikes? Sign me up!

We rode two Pedego City Commuters over the weekend down in Charlotte, NC while visiting family and loved, loved, loved them. If the car hadn't been full already, we probably would have bought them then and there.

Last tiny complication is that we live in upstate New York, Saratoga County. While we have lots of nice bike/rail trail paths around here, I have also learned enough to see that there is a certain grayness to the legal situation here. So does anyone live in NY, particularly upstate, that has any light to shine on the reality of bike life around here? I'm ready to buy these things and start putting a lot of miles on (mostly me, but both of us), but I really don't want to see $6000 going down the road in the trunk of a police car.

Any input welcome! We really are excited about ALL the benefits of these things, getting back on bikes, the health piece, the fun of it. I'd just hate to have to go over to Massachusetts every time I want to go for a ride.

 

[Saratoga Dave]

Forgot to mention also that we used to love to ride around the Lake Placid area, and a huge part of this would be about being able to do so again. I would like nothing better than to be able to ride my ebike from Fish Creek/Tupper Lake area over to Saranac Lake or Lake Placid from time to time, something I could never hope to do anymore on a person powered bike. I used to seek out the biggest hills I could find just to see if I could get up them, and there ain't no shortage of those up that way!

 

[J.R.]

Welcome NOG!

If anyone can shed light on NY ebiking it's @Chris Nolte. Chris has a big ebike dealership in NYC and he's been very active with this forum for a long time. I'm sure he'll chime in since I tagged his name. You could directly address him here or through private conversation.

Good luck!

 

[George S.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_bicycle_laws

Well, as you scroll down the states, NY doesn't seem to be entirely on board...

 

[Saratoga Dave]

A little update:

In our last exciting episode, we had returned home from vacation to upstate NY - the Saratoga region - after a great week on the North Carolina beaches, followed by a visit to Charlotte, where my wife and I had ridden a couple of Pedego bikes and loved the experience.

So yesterday I was out on a local bike path and encountered a woman on an e bike unknown to me: an e-Joe. I stopped and chatted with her and learned that she had bought it locally from a great bike shop - Tomhannock Bicycle, where I had never been - and loved it dearly, since it causes her to want to ride every day.

Came home and watched every You Tube video on e_Joe, read the threads here, watched Court's test of the e-Joe Koda. Drove out to the bike shop this morning. You guessed it... there is now a brand new Koda in the garage with 15 miles on it already. Virtually half the price of the Pedego City Commuter with a similar feature set, at least as far as usage intent goes. Clearly the Pedego is more bulletproof, and you get what you pay for, but this thing completely checks off all the necessary boxes for me. Having a local dealer staffed by a bunch of nice people was the kicker.

Of course the guy gave me the wrong charger for it and I have to run back over there tomorrow to swap that out (and buy more of a cruiser style seat), but guess what? They have a couple of e bikes my wife might like as well! So we (me, at least) have officially joined the club, I am very happy with the stealthy sort of look of this Koda, and my wife will shortly have an e bike of her own as well, no doubt. Bring it on!