Recently Columbia, SC adopted the blue bike rental program. So many larger Cities around the Country have these already so we were excited to also have the program locally. Blue Bike stations are located all over downtown and for a small fee you can rent them via an app on your mobile phone. https://www.bluebikesc.com/

Neither of us had been on a bike in a while but wanted to give it a try. We stopped by Pita Pitt https://pitapitusa.com/ and grabbed 2 sandwiches and then headed to a local bike station. We chose carefully, one located in an area of town that doesn’t have much traffic on the weekends. Before you go be sure to download the app, that will save some time. It was a little cumbersome to get everything working the first time but we finally figured it out and picked two of the electric bikes. Look for the lightening bolt on the back fender, those are the electric powered bikes, the others are regular manual. Each bike has a basket, which was perfect for our sandwiches and beach towel I had thrown in, just in case we needed to pic-nic on the ground. Because we had stopped at the bike station off of Taylor Street closest to the township we decided to ride over to the Bull Street District. That seemed like a safe option as the Bull Street district is home of the Historic State Hospital Grounds and while portions of it are currently being developed for new growth such as the Fireflies baseball stadium, restaurants and housing, other parts of it are still basically a ghost town. We had the best time riding around and looking at all of the old vacant buildings. Some of them are super creepy! https://bullstreetsc.com/

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We found an old pic-nic table to enjoy our lunch on and then got in a bit more exercise, further exploring the area before riding the bikes back to the station where we picked them up. You can rent them for different time increments and there’s a clock on the bike that counts the time down in order to help you keep track of the time. Note: that the bikes are for ages 18 and up but your children could bring their own bikes and ride along with you. You don’t have to drop them back at the same bike station that you picked them up at. You could indeed ride across town and drop them in a different bike station area. Returning them was super easy. You pop them back on the bike rack and plug them in, all set and good to go.

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We had the best time finding out that it’s true “it is just like riding a bike”. We hope to try more of the bike locations and explore other parts of the City when time allows. Seeing your City from a different view (and not from a car window) is very interesting.