This past Sunday my wife, Karen, my youngest daughter, Abbey, and I had a nice fall Sunday to spend in New York City. Crisp, cool and clear with a slight breeze up from the south along the rivers either side of Manhattan. We were staying in Brooklyn, a block from Abbey’s roommate’s family home. After brunch and some shopping we walked a couple of blocks from our hotel to go on a bike ride into Manhattan using the city’s new bikeshare program.

A nice Sunday bike ride on a pleasant fall day. In some respects that’s what it was, but in several other respects it was a trying experience. Before taking off I downloaded an iPhone app called ‘City Bikes’ while my wife downloaded the NY City Bike Share app. By the end of the day both of us were impressed with the ‘City Bikes’ app. It showed us where the stations were and also how many open slots were available and how many bikes to rent were available. Both of these are important to know. Later on our travels we had a chance to use the ‘City Bikes’ app in DC and found it worked well there as well. The app covers about 200 cities around the world with bike sharing programs so it seems incredibly comprehensive.

I purchased two one day passes for myself and Abbey, the limit for one credit card. Karen had her credit card denied and had to spend fifteen minutes with Bank of America confirming that, no, she was not traveling in a foreign country and, yes, she did make these previous 10 transactions over the past five days. As she was laboring through validation processes with BofA I got a text on my iPhone from my credit card provider, Chase, asking if I, indeed, had placed a recent transaction for a bike rental. Boy, these rental kiosks must be suspect! I texted a ‘1’ back declaring that, yes, the charge was legit so I was good to go. Once all purchase authorisations were settled the three of us had our bikes and off we went. Signage for cyclists approaching the Manhattan Bridge heading into the Big Apple were quite good. We had no problem getting onto, up and over the bridge though the lanes were a little tight in some places. At the base of the bridge entrance on the Manhattan side it took us few minutes to get our bearings. We navigated our way onto Chrystie St heading north with the plan of trading in our bikes (there is a 30 minute time limit for free use on each rental before extra charges kick in).

As we wended our way north on Chrystie St, it was a little disconcerting to face cyclists coming at us against the traffic. I don’t see this much during my rides in SF, but this appeared to be standard practice with the biking elite in Manhattan. At the 16th and Chrystie St station there were only four open slots for the three of us. Karen and Abby docked just fine. My first attempt was a failure and thankfully there was one additional slot left that did work. I suppose, if we had been desperate, Karen could have retrieved a new bike to open up a slot and I could then have docked mine. With a fresh half hour to work with we expected we could go north a block and turn left on Prince Street only to find out that Prince Street doesn’t intersect with Chrystie Street, but starts one block over. Correcting for this, by going up to north to Houston Street and then south on Bowery we got back on track.

Our ride west along Prince Street was our first experience having trouble navigating intersections. This was not just an issue of watching out for aggressive drivers, there were plenty of those, but having to deal with aggressive pedestrians as well. If we hadn’t pushed our way through the throngs crossing intersections on foot (against the lights) we’d still be in Manhattan today.

The ride along Prince Street was scenic and pleasant, intersection jams aside, and we tooled along until we got to McDougal Street where we stashed our bikes in order to take a neighborhood stroll and get treats. This was fun neighborhood to walk around in displaying fresh, crisp fall air and plenty of shops with goods on sale. We found a quaint French cafe to provide us with a bit of sweets and a touch of caffeine. Having walked back toward mid town a few blocks we only had a block or so to go to find another bike station from which to grab our third bikes of the day. I must say, the ability to dock and forget the bike you have and then just pick up another is a refreshing experience. At this point in our day’s ride I had figured out that I should look at the available bikes and pick the one with a bike seat height set closest to what I need. All bike share bikes have a set of numbers on the their seatposts designating seat heights. Now that I know my seat height number, I know what I’m looking for even though changing bike seat height is relatively easy. The bike I picked up from this station had a broken bike gear changer cover. Damage to bike share bikes must be a ongoing problem for the overall program. In general, these bikes are overbuilt and should be able to handle a fair amount of abuse. At this kiosk, Karen had retrieved a slip of paper for her five digit code, but returned to the kiosk, as I was still working to get my codes, because the code she was given didn’t work. Mildly frustrating.

We navigated north to Prince Street again, west to Hudson Street and, finally, west on Houston Street through to the Hudson River bikeway where we headed south. For a Sunday afternoon in mid-October, the bikeway was well occupied by cyclists of all shapes, sizes and degrees of lycra apparel. I stopped along the way to get a pic of the new World Trade Center Tower until we reached Warren Street and traded in for our fourth bikes. At this kiosk there were three Europeans ahead of us. I chatted them up a bit and immediately found out they were having problems getting credit authorization to they could actually rent the bikes. The kiosks used a funny term when users were asked to use their credit cards. The display just said ‘Dip your credit card’. What the hell does ‘dip’ mean? At first, I thought the Europeans were having problems because their credit cards were chip based versus magnetic stripe based like most domestic US credit cards. I used my credit card successfully and heard the Europeans express a collective ‘Aaah’ as they saw I inserted and quickly removed my card to get it to work. The Europeans had interpreted the word ‘dip’ to mean insert your credit card and leave it there. By this point in our ride all three of us had gotten savvy enough to know we were better off memorizing the five digit code presented on the screen versus relying on the printouts.

It was a short ride, crosstown, on Warren Street to the Commons Historic District and Brooklyn Bridge City Hall. Riding east across the Brooklyn Bridge on a pleasant Sunday afternoon was like salmon swimming up stream during spawning season. A slender painted bike path gave us some right of way, but the crowd of pedestrians enjoying their stroll over and back across the bridge was stifling. Once on solid ground again in Brooklyn it was short ride back to our original bike station. Riding in Brooklyn was a welcome, calmer relief, to the intensity of Manhattan traffic and pedestrian congestion.

I’ve ridden bikes from bike share programs in six different major metropolitan cities now on three different continents. The programs all have some quirks to them, but, in general, provide a great way to see a new city while taking in the fresh air and getting a little exercise. I recommend it, but only if you are sure enough and secure enough in your capabilities, as a bike rider, to face each new cities conventions and challenges.