Letters to the editor July 18

Don’t judge

A letter to the editor on July 14 suggested that e-bikes are sold selling exercise as their main use. I don’t believe that is the case.

Being an older person with a knee replacement, I love to ride a bike and now my e-bike makes it possible for me to get out on the road or in hills again and enjoy being outside doing something I love to do. I do not use the peddle assist all of the time and it is just like riding a non-electric bike and I get a fine work out when wanted.

So, rather than judge those riding e-bikes why not just celebrate the idea that the person is outside enjoying life and not sitting around inside being sad they can’t do the things they used to do. I for one am getting everything I hoped for from my bike and believe it or not there is exercise involved.

— Brent Silcox, Kalispell

Lycra elitists

After reading Ed Dramer’s letter on e-bikes, I’m wondering, do we now know the true identity of the Lycra clad elitist snob bicyclist in “Pearls Before Swine”?

— Joel Vignere, Lakeside

Hail storm hullabaloo

It started with this weird sound, like a train roaring in – what IS this? Then came the hail. The wailing wind, which first brings thrilling excitement, but as the intensity increases, the excitement turns to fear.

Banging on the skylights – will they break? It’s a helpless feeling. All one can do is take pictures and videos and wait. It blows through in moments. Friends in Kalispell and Columbia Falls experienced their own freak hailstorm last week, damaging cars, decimating gardens.

I pulled on Ugg boots and made my way through 4 inches of piled up hailstones. My husband and I walked around our yard in disbelief, taking in everything that’s been destroyed by Mother Nature’s wrath. Vegetables and flowers entirely stripped of leaves and blooms.

Two thoughts prevailed – thankful that we’re not dependent on the food we’d been lovingly nurturing, and compassion for all those folks who’ve lived through much tougher weather events, suffering the loss of entire homes and neighborhoods. Slushing and sliding through ridiculously large hail, the words “climate change” loomed large. While we can’t link individual storms to climate change, we do know that these events are intensifying.

For years I shied away from thinking about climate change, sure that whatever my piddling efforts were, it wasn’t going to amount to a hill of beans. Recently, our daughter brought to our attention that there are effective actions to be taken.

Sen. Jon Tester – the sole farmer in D.C. – understands the impacts of climate change: on food production, wildfire intensification, flooding, and more frequent extreme storms. Please join me by calling his office to say you want meaningful action to reduce carbon pollution.

It’s no longer possible to ignore climate change as we look to doing our part in creating a better world.

— Jordonna Dores, Bigfork