An 80-year-old man who distributes newspapers in the village of Headcorn in Kent says he has been given a ‘new lease of life’ thanks to an e-bike. George Bailey previously worked as a stockbroker and on a local golf course, but has been doing his 2.5-mile paper round for the last 15 years.
Bailey gets up at 6am each day and cycles to Oldfields newsagents. There he collects his papers before heading back to the village to deliver them.
The round takes him about an hour.
“Basically, it's to try and keep fit,” he said. “I’m not one to go jogging at my age.”
It isn’t always such an appealing prospect though. “I keep saying every Christmas I’m going to pack it in.”
iNews reports that Raleigh and Evans Cycles have now offered Bailey a new Raleigh Motus Crossbar e-bike to make life a little easier.
Bailey said: “After celebrating my 80th birthday I was seriously considering whether it was time to now ‘hang up my boots’ and retire from the paper round.
“Knowing I can now continue doing what I love, with a little help from modern technology, is fantastic – especially on a Raleigh, a brand I’ve always admired growing up. I might even still be doing this when I’m 90.”
Fair play to Raleigh and everything, but this does strike us as a massive missed opportunity. If a paperboy is going to ride an e-bike, surely it should be a Paperboy – the “light hybrid e-bike with gaming roots” that is due to be launched by Elite Systems some time soon.
Elite Systems started out producing home computer conversions of popular arcade games in the 1980s before somewhat unexpectedly announcing this change in direction a month or so ago.
The bike’s name is a reference to one of the firm’s best-known titles.
