Using Bike Share as Tourist is asking for Trouble

Using bicycles to explore a city is awesome.  Recently I visited to large cities that have bike sharing services.  Being able to rent bikes at one place and drop them off at another place was great but we ended up with a lot of headaches that caused irritation and inconvenience.

Berlin, Germany: Lidl Bikes 

Berlin has many bicycle sharing companies.  I picked Lidl Bikes since they had the most bikes available throughout the town. These bikes aren't tethered to stations, instead you just park them (nearly) anywhere.  If you park them at certain hot spots you get a discount on your rental.  Finding and renting the bikes is easy through the app.  However, one account can only rent two bikes at a time.  This meant that my wife had to create an account as well for the whole family to checkout bikes.

For some reason both accounts didn't work after we created them and linked them with our payment method.  It took forever to figure out what the issue was and ultimately it required a phone call to customer service to enable the accounts.

There is a delay between when the app shows the rental completion and when you park the bikes.  So one instance we didn't noticed until after a couple hours that one of the four bikes we rented and parked was still checked out to us and incurring charges.  Fear came over me that the bike isn't locked and someone took it to who knows where.  Customer service on the phone told me to go back to the bike and check that it's locked.  The customer service rep couldn't tell me if the bike was actually still there.  So we had to go back to the bike (30min walk) to check on it.  Luckily it was there and locked.  I called support again, had to enter a code and they determined that the bike was defect and a technician needed to come and fix it.  I provided the exact location (apparently they can't locate the bike).  While the charges were temporarily removed they appeared again later and were withdrawn from my account.  So another hassle to get these charges refunded.

Lidl bike share in Berlin

Chicago, USA: Divvy Bikes

Chicago has only Divvy Bikes.  These bicycles are bound to docking station.  You have to rent and return from a docking station.  It doesn't have to be the same docking station, but on return there must be a spot for the bike to be returned.  The app tells you how many spots and bikes are at each station.

This time there wasn't any issues getting the bikes, however the app was a bit confusing since you had to "buy a pass" and then if you don't use it right away the pass disappears.  Also the pass is bound to a specific number of bikes.  One account can rent four bikes, but I had to get a new pass when I wanted to just rent one bike.

We had two rentals.  One with four bikes for a little under 30 minutes and another one with a single bike for a little under 60 minutes.  I got charged $13.08 twice for the first rental. After the trip I contacted customer services and the told me "Passes expire 10 minutes after purchase if they are not applied. You attempted to use the passes 3 hours after purchase which is why you ended up purchasing new passes. This email is to confirm that you will receive a refund of your 4 unused pass fee".  For the second rental I got charged $3.27 for the first 30 minutes I presume and still have a $3.27 balance for the second 30 that will be billed next month.

Divvy bike share in Chicago

Conclusions

Both systems are not very intuitive to use and required customer service contacts to make things right.  While one way rentals are nice and convenient, the services were quite the hassle for such a short term visit.  For piece of mind and less hassle I'd recommend going with a traditional bicycle rental for tourists.  If you are longer or more often in that city it might be worth to figure out the quirks and issues of the bike sharing service.

Slater to Yellow Banks Park Camping Bike Tour

It was about time to do another family bicycle tour and the Easter weekend was just perfect for that.  Most importantly the weather was great.  We decided to bike to Yellow Banks Park by Des Moines since the park sounded quite interesting and most of the ride will be on trails.  Now that the kids are bigger and commute daily to school regardless of wind and weather we decided not to take the tandems and instead let everyone ride their own bikes.

We started from Slater instead from our house, because we wanted to trim down the mileage a little.  Doing so reduced the ride by 10 miles each day making it an easy 35 miles each way. As stated earlier, most of the ride is on the High Trestle Trail.  Through Ankeny it becomes the Gay Lead Wilson Trail connector and then the southern most part of the Gay Lead Wilson Trail itself.  Unfortunately the last 5 miles are on the road with no shoulders.  Two up hills and one down hill part going to the park added a little challenge but the worse, part were the dangerous drivers.  Only one car bothered to slow down and not pass us while everyone else just speeded by regardless of oncoming traffic and lack of visibility.

"Yellow Banks Park features 12 primitive camping sites on a beautiful bluff overlooking the Des Moines River".  I couldn't describe the campsites better then their website.  The view from these camp sites are absolute gorgeous.  Of course we weren't the only ones to have the idea to go camping on Easter.  I think the camp ground was maxed out with us taking the last of the campsites on the bluff, right next to the cars.  The area is a big grass patch with each camp site having benches around a fire pit and a picnic table. So an extra tent would be easily accommodated if you arrive late on bike or foot.  All dependent though how nice the park rangers are about it.  A pit toilet is right next to the parking lot.  For water, showers etc you'll have to go to the nearby RV part.

We haven't done much exploring at the Yellow Banks Park.  I went to the Native American mound next to the camp site at sunset and sat there a while in the dark.  The stars in the clear sky were amazing and all the noise from insect and critter activity in the dry leaves was naturely creepy.

The next day we moved the huge black panniers that contained our sleeping mats and sleeping bags from our daughter's to our son's bicycle.  It turned out a bad idea as his rack didn't held the panniers well and came loose while going down the hill. He ended up crash stopping in the grass next to the road and was beat up pretty decently.  Even his front wheel even went out-of-true.  Luckily it wasn't so bad that he couldn't finish the ride or that his enjoyment of the trip darkened.

The rest of the trip was a breeze.  Literally with the tailwind.  The kids rode ahead sometimes loosing us slow folks.

Our planned route: https://www.komoot.com/tour/63012800/zoom
Actual recording on the way back: https://www.komoot.com/tour/63496467/zoom

It's crazy to do something artificially that could be integrated into the day

I recently completed an exercise study in which I did weight machines for a year.  That was a big achievement for me since I never sicked long with an exercise routine.  Although I do have to confess that working through that second part of the year was though since the routine became boring and the assigned weight was getting way to optimistic.  A chip key was programmed with weights "appropriate" for me but being able to leg press only 100lbs less than the exercise asked for becomes a downer.  I do see the value of a trainer that often checks up with you in person or setting your own weight program.

Now that the year is over I have the opportunity to explore the exercises of one of the other study groups.  I'm quite well aware how the no-exercise works so naturally I'm doing four weeks of cardio.  I'm really glad I wasn't assigned to the cardio group (or the no-exercise group).  The couple of weeks I've been doing cardio have already been so frustrating.  There is the never ending issue with pairing the wireless heart rate monitor with the machine.  I just want to jump onto the machine and start exercising and not struggle with technology for 6 minutes first.  I have to deal with enough tech the rest of my day.  On top of that, the stationary bike for some reason decided today that I need more and more resistance to the point that I couldn't spin anymore.  Nobody know what was going wrong there. Grrr.

Asides the technical frustrations, being stationary while doing cardio is really mind deadening to me. The only way to survive that is by distracting yourself with music or videos, but dammed me if I forget the head phones.  Neither the upright bikes nor the recumbent bikes are comfortable enough for me to sit in them 25 minutes.  And then there's the lack of breeze as I'm not moving (in respect to my surrounding) at all.  Not sure if I last the whole four weeks.


The nice spring weather outside probably doesn't help.  It's hard to justify being inside if it's nice outside.  It's even harder to justify driving in a rush to the gym instead of bicycle commute to work.  Biking to work is often relaxing for me while having to squeeze the exercise into my day causes often stress.  It's also nice not to have to fill up the car as much.  Yes, you really do notice the greener mode of transportation more in form of $$ than environmental.  But I guess you're really green in both ways by going to work via muscle power.  It's just crazy to do something artificially that could be integrated much better into the day.

Yes, too often I had to drive in order to fit in the exercise.