We still had 2 miles to go and we were left without battery. At that point John and Maximinium set off on their 'muscular' bikes to cover the kilometers that separated their home from the pub ...
Once upon a time, in a small town in North Carolina, there was John: statuesque physique, icy eyes. Needless to say, girls liked him. He had a nice 26 ”bike with an aluminum frame in a nice hot pink. Really strange and unconventional for the time, but John had personality and it took little to silence everyone, both on the saddle and off the bike: a lick of the mouth or after a stout beer or a double on the steps of the country was enough to make anyone look down. Sam, on the other hand, was a biker with an inventive soul and had a bike like John in his garage. Only the coloring was different: a nice glossy black. It is useless to deny it, he spent more time off the bike than on the bike: the magazines in the sector were all his but then he loved to study them and "mentalize them", as he said, more than putting them down and riding your mountain bike. Sam came out of the garage one day with a battery attached to his MTB. Few knew what it was but some had guessed: it was a pedal assisted bike! John learned of this from a friend, while he had finished his daily toil up the mountain of the village that reached 2000m: 5 hours of walking with a difference in altitude of 2200m. He had only covered 30km but he was happy: once he got to the top he relaxed for a moment and then downhill.
John liked to go all the way down but, to risk less, he used to make tactical stops every now and then. At the end of the tour, the body was tried: the fatigue in the face was tangible but the belly (and the soul) were eager for a nice pork knuckle (even if, in those days, he was inquiring about vegan nutrition). Then there is the beer at the 'Main Bar': this time a high fermentation artisanal with a very light malt. Shortly after, by pure fatality, Sam also arrives at the 'Main Bar' with his revolutionary electric bike: he was tired, but not too much.

Surrounded by friends, who were not from the sector, he told of having passed through the Nantahala National Forest, aiming for the Smoky Mountains without neglecting the Cherokee National Forest: he had traveled three times the km of John, with much more altitude, and seen magnificent places . All in 5 hours… the same as John's! But this did not convince Maximinium, son of the pub owner and neighbor of John. “Ok that it is hard anyway”, he said, “ok that the e-bike will be the future, but do we humans need to simplify our lives so much? Isn't there a risk of overstepping the stages? ”.
Maximinium was only 12 years old, but his ideas were very clear: “Why do you have to go through all the national parks of North Carolina in one day? Wasn't just one enough and the other two over the next two weekends? ”. Just at that precise moment, Sam ordered first, second and side dish while John looked at him and dissented: "Sam is burning the Maximinium stages: he risks not taking the right times, neither on the bike nor after". At that point John and Maximinium set off on their 'muscular' bikes to do those 2km that separated their home from the pub. Hard but sincere distance.

