That bike is BUSTED!

You never know what’s going to happen on a bike ride. Rarely do things go exactly as planned, but for the most part the bumps along the way are minor. But that’s part of the fun – going with the flow.

Last night Ronnie Harris prepared a fabulous ride on the history of the Battle of Baton Rouge. We had 18 stops planned and the ride covered roughly 7 miles. We made it to about half of the locations before we reached our two-hour limit.

No worries! That just means we get to go on a PART 2 ride next week!

Now, if that were the only issue we encountered, then that would have been no problems at all. Alas, we had two mechanical issues as well.

The first happened with a first-time rider who used one of the Gotcha Bikes. These are the green bikes located around downtown Baton Rouge that people can rent.

I really want to love Gotcha Bikes, but every time one of our riders uses one, there has been an issue. This time, the pedal came off the bike. When we got to the next rack with more bikes, none of the three parked there worked.

That rider and his partner were forced to bail on the ride. It happens, it’s just a bummer when it happens because a thing that shouldn’t have been a problem was in fact a problem.

In related news, I attended the Downtown Development District meeting the morning after the ride. At that meeting they announced that Gotcha Bikes is expanding into Phase 2 of its original three phase approach.

In Phase 1, the company was supposed to put 500 bikes on the street. Currently, they claim to have 200 bikes on the road. If the three bikes that were not working last night were part of that overall number, then I fear that there are far fewer bikes that are actually in operation.

Phase 2 is supposed to see an additional three hundred bikes added to the roster. That means that by the end of the year they are supposed to have 800 bikes available in the city. However, they alluded to the pandemic as preventing them from getting the proper supply to have the correct number of bikes.

All said, I’m hesitant to believe the phase 2 is possible with the level of bikes they claim will be available. Additionally, perhaps the goal should first be getting back to full Phase 1 operation before looking at expansion.

Moving right along, the next bike failure was due to parts falling off a bike. The bike was being ridden by our youngest rider. Her name is Harley and thank goodness she’s an experienced rider, because she handled the whole thing beautifully.

Our ride is no-man-left-behind, and I’m proud of that. One of the things I love most about going on a group ride is that someone will always help if you have an issue. In this case, about 10 people stayed behind to assist. They managed to find almost all of the missing pieces, but didn’t have the necessary tools to finish the job.

It was getting dark and the rest of the group was headed back to the end location. We had to make a decision. It was at this point that Ronald Glenn gave Harley his bike and he rode her broken bike back to the Electric Depot.

This type of bonding over a shared experience is something Mika and I discussed on the latest edition of our podcast. You can listen to that and past episodes by CLICKING HERE.