Seattle Bike Share Evaluation: Lime and Spin

Today is the last day of the Downtown Sailing Series. Up until now, I'd take the bus from work to the marina and then hitch or Lyft back.

Today I drove and leveraged the free daily parking at EBM and decided to try Seattle's bike sharing system.

After parking, the Lime app showed me to a bike in the marina. When I walked up to the bike there was an EBM employee that saw me and said "Is this your bike?" I responded that I was hoping it could be mine. It was all civil and all but apparently it's his job to remove these from EBM property. He said people leave them on the sidewalks (this one was in a bike rack). He mentioned that the orange bikes (spin) are really bad because it takes days for them to pick them up.

Anyway I rented the bike easily enough. The app couldn't scan the QR code so I just entered the number.

The Lime bikes are well made but tanks. I think it had a six-speed internal hub. Nice basket but no cup holder (water bottle holder) so my coffee kept spilling.  I tried riding with my backpack in the basket but the basket steers with the front wheel and the extra weight made the bike unstable. Also the handle bars were really narrow - like on a kids bike.

All in all I rode for 22 minutes and hated it. I just didn't like the bike. FWIW, my ride was free -- I don't know why but I'm grateful.

At 22-minutes, I saw an orange bike (Spin) and immediately switched. Wow, these are a lot nicer. Not as well built and only three speeds but I was able to comfortably ride at -- literally -- twice the speed.

The Spin bike has no cupholder but the basket is always aligned with the frame and it was easily able to carry my backpack. Much nicer handlebars and grips.

I also rode for 22 minutes on the spin bike and I hope it's still out front when it's time to go to the race tonight. The only real negative was that I hit a bump and my backpack went flying from the basket and I bent my MacBook.  Lesson learned -- strap it down. Mac is fine.

drk