Bike sharing was introduced to Tampa with great fanfare last fall, as Mayor Buckhorn and his two-wheeled friends gathered at Water Works Park to jump aboard a fleet of bicyles from Coast Bike Share. An affiliate of the nationwide SoBi (Social Bicycles) system, it allows riders to sign up online and access Coast’s GPS-equipped bikes at racks and kiosks throughout downtown Tampa.

The inviting blue-and-grey bicycles were installed not long ago in the parking garage near CL’s offices in Ybor Square. This week’s issue seemed like the perfect time to give the things a test run. Our idea (borrowed in part from a similar project done by The Stranger, the Seattle alt-weekly) was to see who could get from the garage to the Tampa Waterside Marriott first: Scott in his Hyundai Santa Fe; Julio via the TECO Line Streetcar; Daniel on his sleek Specialized Allez E5 road bike; photographer Chip on his 11-year-old Vertical bike; or me, who had signed up for an account with Coast.

Here are our adventures and misadventures, plus a few lessons learned.

DW: I spent the first six minutes of my should-have-been-riding-already time trying to figure out how to unlock the bike. I finally realized you have to enter your account # before your PIN, so I checked my email to find the account info Coast had sent me, and voila!

Julio: I had to wait six to seven minutes for the streetcar to leave the stop. I imagine he was just waiting for other streetcars to move.

Scott: I was in a car, so the obvious assumption would be that I’d get to our destination first. But I honestly wasn’t sure, given it was downtown driving at lunch hour.

DW: After I successfully logged in, an instruction on the bike’s little screen said, “Pull out the unlocked U-Bar when prompted and place in holster.” The “holster,” it turns out, is two holes in the back bumper of the bike, allowing you to take your U-Bar — aka, bike lock — with you. The holster is not the bicycle rack, which is where I left my U-Bar. Luckily, the lock was still there when I got back. [Coast’s Eric Trull tells me I wasn’t the only one to misunderstand the instructions. “It happens all the time,” he said. “We’re working on better language.”]

Scott: I took Nuccio Parkway to Nebraska to Kennedy to Tampa. A few lights slowed me down, but it was mostly people waiting for a curbside parking space, or pulling into or out of a curbside parking space, that hurt me most. There are also about a million ways to get from one place to the other by car, so you have to decide to go one way and end up shifting your game plan at one light or another. Who knows if any one is really better?

Julio: I wasn’t sure what my stop was, so I had to ask the driver. He very politely told me the stop number.

Chip: I stopped to shoot Julio on the trolley, then cut through the trolley yard and across empty lots, taking whatever shortcuts I could find in order to get to the Marriott before anyone so I could shoot people arriving. Urban biking at its finest!

Daniel: On principle, I would recommend road bikes 10 out of 10 times for this kind of commute, with one giant stipulation; Tampa is not very bike-friendly. To get from Point A to Point B I had to risk riding on the shoulder without a proper lane and then avoid roads altogether via the Meridien bike path and through Cotanchobee Fort Brooke Park, where I had to dodge children and a flock of Segways. That said, I did win the race. I made it to the finish line in exactly 10 minutes while riding at a normal, non-racing pace.

Scott: I’m a conservative parker. I parked in the first available space I saw as I got “near” my destination. Then I walked, like, six blocks past about 50 vacant and better spaces.

Health & Fitness 2015: The great bike/car/streetcar challenge Credit: Chip Weiner

Julio: For most of the ride I was by myself on the streetcar. Four passengers stepped in at Channelside, all here for the Outback Bowl. By the time I got to the final stop, Chip, Daniel and Scott were already there. My cost for the ride was $5 for a daily pass.

DW: I relied on a “Recommended Bike Routes” map I found online. You’d think Recommended Bike Routes would be routes with bike paths, or at least bike lanes, but nope. [Coast is working on its own map of recommended routes, or “Top Rides,” which should be online soon.] But New Year’s Eve afternoon being light on pedestrians, I was able to bump down emptied sidewalks, cut through Amalie Arena and make my way to the Coast Bike “hub” at the Marriott where, no surprise, I arrived last — 23 minutes after I started out (but only a few minutes after Julio).

Things I learned along the way:
• The gear shift is that little movable band on the right handlebar.
• The ding I heard now and then was not a signal that my time was prematurely up; I had simply jarred the bicycle bell.
• If you're planning a post-ride lunch at the Sail Pavilion, check the hours first (they don't open till 2).
• If you head up Channelside Drive by bike (my return route), be prepared for an obstacle course: The sidewalk is interrupted every few yards by electric poles. Maneuvering around them ain’t easy.

But. Nobody died, or even crashed. It was good exercise, and fun. And because I returned exactly an hour after we started out, my round trip cost only five bucks.

Besides the hourly rentals, Coast Bike memberships are available per month ($30) and per year ($79/$59 students), each plan including 1 hour of riding time per day, $2.50 for every additional 30 minutes, with a max charge of $25 a day. Eric Trull says the company is already on track for 1,000 members, “doing a little better than we planned.”

And now that I’ve gotten accustomed to the system, I’d say, sign up. Check out the website, coastbikeshare.com, and download the Social Bicyles mobile app, which allows you to reserve bikes from your smartphone and connect with other SoBi riders.

I’ll race you.