How E-bikes Won My Heart

Learning to love a misfit mode of transportation

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You’re reading Buzzcut, a newsletter of close-cropped commentary on travel, style, history, and nature by writer and strategist Zander Abranowicz.

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This month’s essay was published on my favorite environmental news platform: Heatmap. You can read my last essay for the publication, “How Birding Became Cool,” here. Heads up, you’ll have to sign in to read this article for free. Once you’ve maxed out those freebies, you’ll want to subscribe for the smartest climate coverage out there.

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Uncompensated Endorsement

A paean to what moves me

How E-bikes Won My Heart

When I lived in New York, I regarded the electric bike as something of a pest. Not quite bicycle, not quite motor vehicle, a misfit mode of transport welcome neither in the bike lane nor in the street. To be sure, I benefited, in the form of fresh meals ferried to my stoop, from the intrepid delivery people racing up and down the boroughs on battery-powered bikes. But as a cyclist sharing the road with them, I’m ashamed to say they often brought out my inner Ratso Rizzo.

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Something You Should Know

A sharp fact for your cocktail party quiver

Mark Twain was born in 1835 and died in 1910: both years that Halley’s Comet passed by earth (it next returns in July 2061)