Amo lives with his wife and two children in the Richmond and works in the Financial District. Before Amo got an ebike, his commute by car was often unpredictable and meant sitting in traffic. As a lover of fast, beautifully crafted cars, he was discontented: “Nobody buys a car so that they can crawl at 10-15 miles an hour.”
Commuting by bike began with an office challenge to ride to work for two weeks. “I did it, and I realized it was taking no time at all.” Amo enjoyed commuting with his mountain bike, but it did not yet seem to fit seamlessly into the patterns of his family life. “I was staying fit and healthy, I was reducing my commute time, but the hills of San Francisco were pretty tough to contend with. By the time I got home my kids wanted to jump up and hug me and I was all hot and sweaty.”
As the son of a taylor in London, Amo’s clothing is a highly intentional part of who he is. The time-saving aspects of riding a bike were great but, in order to replace his car, he would have to find a way of doing it in style. “I was wearing different clothes from what I really wanted to wear. I wanted to wear my tailored shirts, trousers, or nice jeans, and I couldn’t do that on a regular bike, particularly if [I was] going to have a hot and sweaty uphill ride.”
Research on the internet brought a whole new solution to his attention: Electric Bikes. He found that they were increasingly aesthetically sophisticated