Sounds like something else to go wrong. E bikes seem to have come to the market before they have proven reliability off road in a hostile environment, so this looks very iffy to me
Perhaps you would have got more interest if you had titled it "Adventurous Senior Ride".
I am guessing that even though your target participants are old and retired they would consider themselves 'Trail Warriors' and young at heart rather than 'Old Codgers'.
To avoid the humiliation I would not ave let on,and made some excuse and sneaked off in opposite direction. BTW is that error code and did you get it fixed?