After 15 years of cycling, including the summer daily commute 13km to work and back, I got an ebike and love the thing. The author is indeed not taking measurements of hard-to-measure things like fun - which gives the gumption to use it instead of the car. An ebike means even days with a cold wind against you are not so daunting and so you ride instead of drive. It means you ride even if you have 15kg of books and laptop in your pack that day.
But my favorite thing about it is that I have a carrier onto which I’ve bungee’d a large rectangular bucket that can carry, say, a gallon of milk and 5 kg of cans, or a 25 lb sack of flour. Between the bucket, the panniers, my large pack - I haven’t decided whether to add a basket yet - I can carry serious freight. And one can only grin when you take all THAT up a hill into the wind at 30 kph.
