Pushing Pedals, Not Budgets

From NY Times 

By MATT GROSS

Yana Paskova for The New York TimesThe Recycle-a-Bicycle outlet in New York sells bikes that have been refurbished by schoolchildren trained in bike mechanics.

It was a busy day. In the morning, I’d followed a creek as far upstream as I could, until it disappeared underground. At midday, I’d stopped in town for a slice of pepperoni pizza. And in the afternoon, I’d explored a chain-link-fence maze at the edge of a university. Now, with dinnertime approaching, I was pedaling home on the trusty bicycle that had taken me to the far corners of my world. I was 10 years old.

That blue BMX may have been the last bike I owned, but in the past quarter-century I’ve never lost my appreciation for the freedom of movement that two wheels offer. Powered not by expensive gas but by cheap leg energy, easy and usually free to park, bicycles are perhaps the ideal vehicle for a frugal traveler, capable of taking you across a city or, if you have the time and ambition, around the world.

They can, however, get pricey, whether you’re renting a hybrid for a couple of days or investing in a serious road bike that will take you coast to coast. And it only gets more complicated (and more expensive) when you’re doing it in another city or another country. As usual, of course, there are a few ways of ensuring you’re saving money on your ride. Let’s talk about rentals first.

In the ideal world, there would be a great Web site that could search out rentals all over the United States and beyond, that would let you filter the results by size and style (road bike, mountain bike and so on). And there is such a site — sort of. RentaBikeNow.com is a searchable database of bike-rental outfits across North America that lets you narrow your quest for, say, tandem bikes in Montreal or mountain bikes near Flagstaff, Ariz.

But RentaBikeNow.com has its limits. Looking for a rental in New York City? Well, the site lists only a single shop in the five boroughs: Pedal Pusher Bicycle Shop, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where road bikes cost $50 a day — not very frugal.

There are, of course, many other places to rent bikes in this city, but RentaBikeNow doesn’t point users to them. Why not? Well, the site is only a year old, and shops have to opt in to get into the database. Maybe with time — and a little publicity — more shops will join up and RentaBikeNow will become more useful. Until then, you’re probably better off Googling your destination with the words “bike rental.”

In the meantime, though, there are other options. Like, for instance, visiting a city that has a free (or nearly free) bike-rental program. Many of these are quite famous — Paris’s Vélib’ is probably the best known — but cities in North America including Montreal and Irvine, Calif., have inaugurated similar programs. Two years ago, Washington, D.C., started SmartBike DC (smartbikedc.com), in which a $40 annual subscription gets you access (in three-hour increments) to bicycles at 10 locations throughout the nation’s capital. Not a bad deal.

The other cities and towns with bike-sharing systems are too numerous to mention, but the Bike-Sharing Blog (bike-sharing.blogspot.com) and a Wikipedia article on bicycle sharing systems(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_sharing_system) keep good track of developments in that realm.

In a sign that more travelers are demanding bicycles, many hotels, including the Sullivans Hotel in Perth, Australia, and Hotel Heldt in Bremen, Germany, now offer them to paying guests. Last spring at the Ace Hotel in Portland, Ore., I was overjoyed to make use of the free bikes provided to guests, and while that sort of service was to be expected in the cycling capital of America, it’s nice to see it being expanded to other cities. Strangely enough, the New York branch of the Ace doesn’t have bikes, but both the Bowery Hotel and the Jane (where rooms start at a fantastic $99 a night) downtown offer bikes for guests.

Occasionally, rental shops don’t carry a bike that’s right for you. Or the price may simply be too high. For example, Bike and Roll (bikeandroll.com), which has rental shops in five major cities, charges about $39 a day for a basic cruiser in New York. That’s cheaper than hopping in taxis all day, but it’s considerably more than a one-day, unlimited Metrocard, at $8.25.

If you’re staying somewhere for a week or longer, that quickly adds up, and it might be smarter to buy a used bicycle instead of renting. Craigslist is the obvious place to start looking. Right now, on the New York City site, I’m seeing road bikes on sale for as little as $50, and an intriguing Soviet-made folding bike for $140. If you can sell the bike at the end of your stay, you can recoup the entire cost. Listing a bike on Craigslist just requires a digital camera, an honest description and some downtime as you wait for customers to answer your classified ad.

There are a couple of big caveats here. First, as anyone who’s ever owned a bike in New York City can tell you, bikes are stolen and resold with frightening regularity. Be wary of overly good deals and aggressive sellers; you don’t want to contribute to this illegal underground marketplace. Also, you’ll need a decent lock. Second, you get what you pay for. The cheaper the bike, the more unsuited it may be to your needs, and the more dangerous. Everyone I’ve spoken with says a full used-bike tune-up could cost about $100, which may be a worthy investment.

There are a couple of ways to avoid these pitfalls. One is to skip Craigslist entirely and seek out used bikes at, say, yard, garage, tag or stoop sales. (The lingo varies with geography.) In Portland, I spotted $50 bikes at yard sales. Were they any good? No idea, but considering that the owners were right there, I could have quizzed them and taken a test ride.

Another is to join a “freecycling” group. No, freecycling isn’t specifically about bikes — it’s the idea of simply offering up all kinds of used items (lamps, beds, CD cases, photo frames and so on) to people who want them, usually through a Yahoo-based group and mailing list. Every once in a while, bikes come up on these lists, and if you’re really lucky, you’ll find one available wherever you’re headed. When you’re ready to come back home, just put it back on the freecycle list and watch it vanish back into the barter economy.

A more reliable way of picking up a used bike is to seek out a refurbishing organization like Recycle-a-Bicycle (recycleabicycle.org). Primarily, Recycle-a-Bicycle runs programs through public schools that train kids in bicycle mechanics and lets them earn free bikes through volunteering. The bikes the kids refurbish, however, go on sale at the organization’s East Village and Brooklyn locations, often for very reasonable prices. The bike won’t need a tuneup, and it will have the shop’s imprimatur when you try to sell it at the end of your visit.

Finally, you can just take your own bike along. Last winter, in my holiday gift guide, I recommended the Tokyo Citizen folding bike (citizenbike.com), which costs an insanely low $164 and weighs 29 pounds — small enough to check in easily. (You’ll want the $28 carrying bag as well.) Be careful, though. Some airlines will charge you for a bike, even if it’s smaller or lighter than a similar-size piece of luggage. Before you fly, check out the International Bicycle Fund’s (ibike.org) handy chart on which airlines charge what.

Oh, and before you get on that lovely new cheap bike, do what you know your mother would ask you to: put on a helmet.