Month: September 2019

Enlarge (credit: Nintendo)

A quick PSA for anyone with a Nintendo Switch and an Amazon Prime account: a deal that gives a free year of Nintendo Switch Online to those who subscribe to Amazon’s Twitch Prime service is set to expire tomorrow, September 24.

For the uninitiated, Nintendo Switch Online is a subscription service that normally costs $20 a year and is required to play online multiplayer in most Switch games. (Free-to-play titles like Fortnite are exempt, but it’s needed for games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate or the upcoming Overwatch port.) We noted this Amazon deal when it arrived in March, but with Nintendo adding a slate of classic Super Nintendo games to the service (albeit at the expense of monthly releases), it remains a good bargain if you already have a Prime membership.

Redeeming the offer isn’t entirely straightforward, so as a reminder, here’s what you have to do to get the full year. Again, all of this presumes you pay for Prime to begin with:

Enlarge / This isn't your author, but he did get to take this model down a busy urban street and into the relative sanity of Central Park. (credit: Trek)

One of my favorite moments in bicycling comes when you find the exact right combination of effort, gearing, wind speed, road surface, and slope. For a few magic moments, acceleration feels effortless, and you rocket forward like there's a giant hand pushing you from behind.

Last week, I experienced something similar, but it came while riding uphill on the toughest section of Central Park's loop road. The effortless acceleration was courtesy of a compact but powerful electric motor embedded in the frame of a new line of bikes introduced by Trek. The test ride was meant to introduce me to Trek's new models, but it also introduced me to pedal-assist bikes more generally.

The experience was very different from my expectations, in part because there are multiple experiences, depending on exactly how you tweak a combination of settings, gearing, and effort. The results were anything from a gentle boost as I pedaled on the flats to ripping up a hill at speeds that made me a hazard to my fellow cyclists.