Hello world! I'm a queer bike rider with #longcovid who as part of my rehab got a #recumbent #ebike so I can keep cycling with my orthostatic intolerance & post-exertional malaise.
I care about accessibility and urbanism and want to make sure that adapted bike riders like myself aren't forgotten in the process of reclaiming cities from cars.
@Dangerous_beans From what I can tell the bike hasn't /treated/ the #PostExertionalMalaise - I still "crash" just as readily and still need as long to recover. (Getting rx'd steroids have helped me on that though!)
What the ebike helps with is avoiding the push-crash cycle - if I want to speed up or go up a hill I just increase how much the motor contributes to the pedal assist, so that I don't have to get my heart rate up and subsequently crash. That's opened up so much more of the city to me.
@Dangerous_beans Yeah that was a huge reason I decided to go for the ebike. I had an old Rans Rocket #recumbent already and it was good for the POTS but my city has a lot of variety in elevation and just huge areas of the city were effectively cut off from me because of hills I couldn't climb without crashing.
It would have been much cheaper for me to do a kit conversion of my old 'bent but it was old and I had been wanting for ages to get a nicer one.
Bi cripple on a crip bike
Alex von Kitchen