I dunno if anyone calls Portland "BikeTown" per the title, in CamelCase like that. In snake world (Pythonista world) we'd typically use "snake_case" as in "bike_town".
Aside: on my Facebook timeline, I'm reassuring peeps that even though we're a crow town, hence CrowTown (a moniker I favor), that doesn't mean "unfriendly to pigeons". On the contrary, pigeons are welcome, Canadian geese too, we just don't have that many, compared to crows.
I'd been saying to Dr D and others that on my bucket list was to try out one of these BikeTown bikes everyone is using.
We did a whole capstone-like project around bicycle sharing for Clarusway. I don't know if those were e-bikes, unlocked and paid for by app. The datasets didn't get into those details.
I'd teach the dataset but not partake. Now it was time to partake as someone left an e-bike sitting on the corner, just half a block away.
My iPhone's front lens is cracked, partly why I use a camera for any lens pix, but is still able to scan QR codes fairly reliably, which I needed to do to unlock the ebike. Even before that, I needed the app.
Once unlocked, I took it back to my driveway so I could grab a helmet. When I'd set out a few minutes before, I wasn't anticipating having an e-bike experience. I was seizing an opportunity in light of a stated intention.
I did my usual Sellwood Loop, meaning
- SE Harrison (my street)
- down through Ladd's Addition, around the circle (Palio gone)
- slanting off to the southwest to where the freight lines cross SE 11th and SE 12th.
However, if you're fortunate enough to be on a bicycle, you needn't wait: there's a pedestrian overpass with elevators on both ends. E-bikes are pretty heavy. The elevators made this detour both photogenic (except my battery had died) and physically non-demanding.
- Springwater Corridor from the old Ross Island cement plant,
- to Sellwood,
- past the substation on SE Linn,
- over McLoughlin on the pedestrian bridge,
- and down (in) to the Tacoma-Sellwood Max station, where I left the e-bike locked to a public rack
What was hardest was disengaging and ending the ride once I'd locked the bike up, at the Max station.
I ended up in a chat session through the BikeTown app, which was going nowhere (slowly), when the app finally asked if I was done. Yes!
But why did it take so long to ask? It seems the act of locking the e-bike (using its own lock) was supposed to signal the ride's end, but it hadn't?
Did the chat I was having get someone to send that prompt? After I sent a picture of the bike locked up?
Anyway, I did finally disengage and paid through the app using PayPal which draws from my bank: $21.
- Orange line over Tilikum Crossing (bridge over Willamette)
- walk back to OMSI stop
- FX2 to SE 34th & SE Division
- walk to SE Harrison (loop complete)
The whole e-bike experience was amazingly non-demanding.
This is a loop I do on a conventional bicycle pretty frequently in good weather, and we've been having good weather. I haven't had much if any experience with e-bikes. This one felt powerful and it had plenty of miles charged up in its battery (about 35 when we started, 31 by the end).
That seemed worth it, for a first experience. I'm not planning to stop riding my regular bike, but it's good to have a better sense of this option, when I'm out Wandering and/or having an InterModal Adventure.
