Well, friends, I just found myself seeking points. I’ve become a Bike Angel.

I love CitiBike – being able to grab a bike whenever for a short trip is just magic.

And then I saw a video about Bike Angels, and it grabbed me. It’s genius.

CitiBike has a clumping problem. Bikes flow like tides across the city, and they clump in popular destinations. Some docks end up with lots of bikes and some end up with very few.

They already have some overhead – the electric bikes need someone to come out and swap fresh batteries for dead ones. Repairs need to happen. They also have vans that pull up to overweight docks and transport them over to underweight docks. That’s not great though, using a motor vehicle to move bikes around. Better if people just did it cheaper on the bikes themselves.

That’s the bike angel program. It gives you points for moving bikes from crowded docks to emptier ones. More extreme docks give you more points. Doing it a lot is a streak and racks up your points. It’s all very silly and the very base rate of it all has a point worth around a dime. But it’s enough to make me OK with walking a little farther when I’ve got the time and riding a little farther to drop off at a dock that needs it.

And then I got a streak. And then I got to triple points. And then I found myself taking a ride between two docks to just not break my streak.

They got me!