Spinlister will let you rent bikes from friendly strangers
There’s no better way to see a city — or the countryside — than on a bicycle. It’s the reason bike rental services exist in so many big cities. There’s just one problem: most rental bikes suck. Well, there are two problems, actually: It’s also pretty hard to find a bike rental place outside of a big city. Which explains why Spinlister, a service that lets people rent out their personal bikes to (hopefully) friendly strangers, is so exciting for weekend getaways.
Essentially, it’s like an AirBnB for bikes. You enter the city or zip code where you need a rental, and it kicks back a big old list of two-wheeled wonders. Well, a big old list in some places, at least. There were all sorts of rides in San Francisco and Portland, a handful in Austin and Cincinnati, and one lonely bicycle in Birmingham, Alabama.
But, for a new service, the offerings are surprisingly robust. (We weren’t really expecting to see any in Birmingham, to be honest.) And while these aren’t demo-quality bikes, they do tend to be much nicer than the rustbuckets you’ll pick up from most bike rental shops. And some are just completely awesome. Ride on!
Mat Honan is a senior writer for Wired's Gadget Lab and the co-founder of the Knight-Batten award-winning Longshot magazine.
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