Freedom from Pain: Ruby Needs an E-Bike

Hi I’m Ruby! I’m a disabled college student with mobility issues and autism that’s really sick and tired of the unreliable public transportation in Tucson and the massive amount of time it wastes for me. I’m trying to crowdfund for an electric bike that is as cheap as possible while still being reliable and recommended by many many blogs and sites dedicated to talking about transportation outside of a car.

I do not have a license and definitely couldn’t afford a car for myself regardless. My wife’s work schedule is inconsistent, and they cannot reliably transport me to and from school, or really anywhere else I need to go such as the book store where I buy books for school amongst other such novelties.

To provide an example of how the public transportation system wastes my time, the other day I went to Bookman’s, a local media exchange, to purchase back issues of a science fiction magazine to do research for the class I’m taking regarding science fiction literature. I had left my home at 4PM and arrived back home at 7:30PM. I was in the store for approximately twenty minutes. I mapped out various routes via a bike that is not motorized, and the travel time to that specific store is roughly 30 minutes. So, 1 hour in total for travel plus 20 minutes in store for let’s just round up to an hour and a half. Taking the bus if we remove time spent in store took three hours. I am a busy college student and do not have the time to be spending three hours on travel alone to a business that is about five miles away.

The buses in Tucson also only run every 30 minutes, and I often find myself standing for that thirty minutes due to overcrowded bus stops. I’m unsure whether I have fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis as I’m still being tested for a handful of bodily issues, but I have chronic knee pain (as well as pain in other areas), and standing for 30 minutes is painful enough if we ignore the approximately one mile I have to travel to the bus stop I take to get to school.

As a college student who doesn’t have a lot of money for expenses like an E-Bike and a wife who doesn’t have a lot of money for things outside of our regular bills, I’m hoping I can raise enough money to avoid increasing my physical pain, the amount of time I spend travelling to carry out regular errands and attend classes, and the overall mental strife of having to deal with various other things like sexual harassment on buses and general over stimulation by the various sounds associated with buses such as people playing music out loud and talking very loudly. My college campus has enough of that for me for any given day.

Getting an E-bike will award me with freedom, and save me a massive amount of time along with other benefits such as reducing the amount of physical pain I experience on a daily basis. I really hope you will donate or at least tell your friends and family about my campaign. Thank you.

Any additional money raised outside of the base cost for the bike will be used for things like bike locks and other safety accessories.