Colm O'Regan: I tried an electric bike for the first time - I worry a lot about it being stolen

Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Picture: Denis Minihane.

At first, I don’t notice any difference, then there’s a moment where it nudges me along. I thought it was interfering. Like people who say “I’ll drive” and take the computer mouse out of your hand. But the feeling doesn’t last long. Within seconds I was happy to take the help from it.

‘It’ is an electric bike. Just a loan of one at this stage. My wife borrowed it from an e-bike library scheme through the school. I took it for some spins.

The first silly half-thought I needed to get out of my head — that electric bikes are somehow cheating.

You see, a bicycle is anarchic. It’s cheap. Self-sufficient. Just your legs and a system of levers. Whereas the e-bike with its little battery indicator that reminds you are dependent on the electricity grid, just a sop to The Man, to fecking capitalism. 

When I passed the mechanical cyclists I felt sheepish. As if the solidarity we used to have was gone. Like the time Bob Dylan first used an electric bike.

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Yeah well, that feeling didn’t last long either. About as long as the first time I left from a set of traffic lights.

The Take-off is the Big Thing. For anyone who doesn’t cycle, the thing to realize is that it’s ALL about momentum.

As a cyclist, I build up hard-won momentum with my out-of-shape, sometimes hungover body, and then I jealously guard it, my crown joules. That’s why I don’t always let you out onto the road in front of me or wave you into that right turn.

I’d always love to do you a favour and brake and get a wave but it’d be like giving you a place in the Lidl queue when you had MORE groceries than me.

But with the electric, the take-off is completely different. I can get the momentum back for no cost.

So go ahead motorist who was waiting for ages for these impatient hoors to let you out. Off you go out of the Circle K.

And there’s a new psychology that takes over when you know there’ll be a bit of electric help.

It’s easier to overcome the inertia that prevents you from ditching the car. Electric bikes will be brilliant for those with mobility issues, for small cargo but also, less nobly: will it get weak-willed people like me to use the car less?

So far so good. There have already been at least three journeys where I thought about distance, time, a hill, or facing into the wind and faltered. But then a little voice (maybe it actually came from the bike) said “I have your back”.

Because that’s what cycling it feels like. It’s not a massive battery so it’s just a bit like having a noiseless wind behind me.

It’s not a cool bike. Neither skinny and lissom for the sockless, nor is it fat-tyred like those yokes used in rap videos. where a diverse group of women (diverse racially, not sartorially because they’re all in bikinis) dance around while a lot of men point vigorously.

It’s nerdy. Baskety. Not aerodynamic. Maybe that’s better. Because there is the conundrum of steal-ability in Ireland, where bike theft is practically on the Junior Cert
curriculum.

It’s still nice enough that I worry a lot more about it being stolen. Maybe we need to have loads of ordinary-looking ones so that the thieves can concentrate on your nice one. Sorry, yes while you were reading this someone from the Aldi Handheld Angle Grinder Crew has been round to collect.

My analog bike looks forlorn at the moment. But I haven’t forgotten that it got me where I am today. And when the other one goes back to the library, it’ll get me somewhere else after.