Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

This morning, Roland, Karen and I went to the launch of Vancity Bike Share, to wait in line and eat pancakes served by Libby Davies, Gregor Robertson, and Shane Simpson, all BC MLA and pick up my shiny red, Vancity logo-emblazoned one-speed cruiser plus non-branded red bike lock and non-branded red helmet. And a Vancity logo-emblazoned red t-shirt. Pretty good score for writing a 98-word blog post. After three weeks of going who-knows-where with the bike, I'll be handing it off, likely to Karen. Photos forthcoming from me, but Roland already has a set on Flickr. This will be my first ever bike ride home from work, so I'll have to dig deep for my signals and etiquette, having lived in the Lower Mainland for 10 years but having ridden a bike two times at most in that timespan.

I'm already a Vancity member, so they're not winning a convert out of me. As far as PR campaigns go, "releasing" bikes to share then donating them to PEDAL could be a lot worse.

From Rob Cottingham and others, comes a link to the Vancity Bike Share experiment. The basic idea is that Vancity gives me a bike, I keep it for about 3 weeks, write about it on ChangeEverything.ca (and here, of course), then give it to someone else. I'm not sure if I know what I got myself into, but I've submitted a request and tomorrow I should be picking up a bike. My brief, just-under-100-words submission follows:

I haven't owned a bike in years, and never while in Vancouver. I'm a little nervous about the concept of biking to work, since I know how many hills, up and down, there are on the way. Thankfully, the bike path starts just outside my apartment, and maybe I can get some experience with the bus bike rack if it comes to it. Time for some daily low-impact exercise to add to my high-impact twice-weekly workouts. If the bikes are identifiably bike sharing bikes, then I'm not afraid of making it a conversation piece either!

Tomorrow is the launch and pancake breakfast, not necessarily in that order. I'm planning to attend, with my camera, of course.