The Friday Cyclotouriste

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I spent five days using the CaBi system to make a simple, 3-mile, round trip commute while working in DC this past week. It was great. I loved not having to ride the metro or take the bus (or have to travel with my own bike).

As much as I enjoyed the system, I did experience a couple snafus that caused me to lose some confidence in the system (more on that in Part 2).

But I had no major complaints about the bike itself. I’m a big, big fan of the front rack and bungee cord. The system worked great for holding my satchel securely in place. The quibbles below are all relatively minor and somewhat subjective:

• the fenders are too short (as Dave pointed out in the previous post’s comments);
• the high gear (on the 3-speed hub) could be spaced a tad higher; and,
• the shift lag — on the bikes I rode — was quite noticeable.

There’s also an amazing (and in my opinion, indispensable) mobile phone app, Bixou, which lets you locate nearby stations and display live updates of both the number of bicycles and the number of open docks at any location.

Example of Bixou's interface, with data from the Paris system.