BICYCLE! Part 1, Dec 2012

Soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GugsCdLHm-Q

When I first arrived in Melbourne, I didn't have a bike - it was in the shipping container. When I was staying at University College, it didn't matter too much since it was a 20 minute walk to work. When I moved to Steve's it was a 40 minute walk to work, or two trams, which often ended up taking 40 minutes anyway. (I just realized recently that I could have done it on one tram in 20 minutes by walking an extra 5 minutes...) Anyway, Steve's place happens to be right next to Southern Cross Train Station, which is one of the hubs for the Melbourne bike share,  http://www.melbournebikeshare.com.au/station/southern-cross-station
So I thought I'd give it a try one morning in December.

Here's how it works: You bring along a credit card. If you don't have a helmet, you can get one for $5 from a vending machine, because you are required by law to wear one. This is really handy if you happen to be riding your bike home from the bar at 3am and your helmet is at home and your bike is at the office... not that I would know anything about that. Anyway, when you're done with the helmet, you can return it to a 7-11 where they'll give you $3 back. Or you can just keep it and use it because no one is going to steal your $5 blue helmet, and if they did, so what? You can just get another out of a vending machine.

Once you have a helmet, you swipe your credit card at the bike share station, it gives you a code, and you get to choose your steed. If you follow the link above you can see how they've got them lined up by the train station. You adjust the seat (or if you're me, you ride 5 blocks and then adjust the seat), strap your bag on the front if you'd like, and you're off to the races. And hopefully no one is going too fast at the races because the bikes are sort of ungainly. But good enough, three gears, sturdy and completely unglamorous - not unlike the helmets. Totally not worth stealing, even if I hadn't given my credit card info.

I chose a helmet from the vending machine, picked a steed, loaded on my giant green tote, and hopped on. I rode successfully to work through the CBD (Melbourne's downtown Central Business District), riding on the left hand side of the street in the bike lane, ("stay to the left, the left, the left," I chanted to myself the whole way) and parked my bike at the bike share station 2 blocks from my office. Sweet! I took a picture with my phone to commemorate surviving my first bike ride - so here's my trusty steed, and me.

















Later that week I had the grand plan to get a bike share bike and ride to work (which I did), then use the bike share bike to go look at a place to rent. The viewing was over lunch and the location was sort of close to work, but not walking distance for a middle of a workday adventure. So I walked up to the bike share with my code, only to discover that if you want to use the bike again ($2.70 AUD is good for all day as long as you don't have the bike for more than 30 minutes at a time) you have to have the same credit card. Which, of course, was safely back at my office - a 10 minute walk away. So much for the lunch time apartment viewing. Maybe I should have stuck with the biking and then I wouldn't have broken my foot... although for as hard as I had to concentrate to stay on the left back then I think walking was probably less risky overall.