“The Legs Feed the Wolf”

Why the Electric Bike is ruining my street, and possibly childhood

When I was a kid, my parents had the ability to provide me and my six siblings with a very rare commodity: acreage. Trees, woods, a valley, a river ran near by where we’d fish in the summer and on which we’d ice skate in the winter. We had fields, apple trees, a cherry tree, raspberry bushes, an enormous garden, hayfields, and horses. We built a teepee in our valley and spent many nights camped out, reading books with flashlights and burning marshmallows over a fire. In the winter, we built massive snow igloos and rode our toboggan surfer style as Dad pulled us on the back of the sleigh driven by our thick-necked chestnut, Robin. We had chickens and goats and an occasional calf which we fed with a massive milk bottle. In the summer we baled hay, and in the fall we cored apples for cider and pie. We got dirty. We sweat. We worked hard outdoors and learned real things: how to grow food, how to keep an animal alive. One thing you learn about horses: they don’t care if you’re late for school, they still need to be fed.

I didn’t know what “cable tv” was until high school and even then, my parents wouldn’t allow it for the smut it would bring into our house. I know, I was a blessed kid in just about every sense a kid can be blessed. I know there are parents out there who would love to provide parks for their own children and may not be in a position to do that.

And, I get it; it’s a different time and I’m a fat old lady pushing 60. Technology can offer us many amazing benefits, like internet connection around the world, advancements in medicine that have vastly improved and even lengthened my own life with MS and cancer. I was able to fly to Australia and speak and lead retreats for weeks because of aeronautics. I can send a picture of the gorgeous quiche I made this morning with the eggs I got from my brother’s chickens and the basil and tomatoes I grew in the yard, to my sister a thousand miles away with the promise to make one for her when she visits—just for fun. There’s a great deal to be said for technology.

But electric bikes? That one, I don’t get.

“The legs feed the wolf, gentlemen.” ~ Herb Brooks, coach to the USA Hockey Team, Olympic Gold Medalists, 1980, Lake Placid

I can still ride a bike, thank the Lord. I work hard to maintain strength in my legs, because once the legs go, especially for the MS patient, the rest of the body often follows suit. I’ve been reading specifically about leg muscles, your quads, the glutes, the largest muscle in your body and how strength in your legs not only improves physical health, but cognitive function as well, neurological health. I thank God I can still peddle.

So when my neighbors at the end of our cul-de-sac bought their very young boys electric bikes, and then proceeded to let them ride, back and forth, back and forth, at breakneck speed and often without helmets and sometimes with passengers, up and down our little street, my heart sank. I can understand an electric bike for someone whose legs can no longer peddle, or someone who has to go a long distance and cannot make it without a little electrical boost. I imagine one day I might need an electric scooter or some such and will be enormously grateful to have it. I can even understand a motorbike for someone doing moto-cross at a field designed for such activity. And I know, boys like to go faster and jump higher. (So do girls.)

But an electric bike? For these healthy, young boys? One of whom has spent any number of times proudly proclaiming how he won the barefoot waterskiing contest last summer and planned to do so again this summer? Aren’t you just shooting him in his little bare foot? Something about the e-bike smells a touch disordered to me.

It’s bad enough the number of adults zooming past me riding electric bikes on the bike path, often without helmets, going dangerous speeds amidst pedestrian traffic. The newspapers are filled with accounts of accidents with electric bikes to blame, serious, life-threatening accidents. So what’s at stake here? Is it just another new toy that is being marketed and packaged such that the young, healthy boy just has to have one? Is it just another money-making behemoth that once it becomes better regulated will fade into history replaced by the next, newer, shinier toy that will make someone a lot of money?

Does that smell funny to anyone else?

To any parents considering the purchase of an electric bike for their child: the legs feed the wolf, my friend. Let your child feel the tremendous satisfaction of getting somewhere on their own power, walking, running, peddling a bike, hiking a hill, swimming across the lake, skiing down a mountain. Don’t be too quick to rob them of the very activity that will strengthen the neurological connections in their brains and remind them that the body is a gift, a gift to be enjoyed and stewarded, a wondrous gift worth tending, protecting, pushing at times, and celebrating at others—no matter what condition it may be in.

We may have made many advances in technology as a species, but we’ll never outdo God in creating the human person. Never. Even as we’re trying to copy his majesty in petri dishes. We’ll never be able to outdo the unspeakable creative power of giving life ex nihilo. Let’s teach our young people about that, about the body as gift, and then take them for a hike.

Liz Kelly is the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Anchored by Hope, Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Place Called Golgotha. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org.