5 Tips If You Are Planning On Riding Lime Scooters In Rochester

There seemed to be a lot of hype and almost more negativity than what I thought there should be, so I decided to try one out. I really only had two goals in my little experiment...1) don't fall off, and 2) just get the thing to actually move.

Finding a scooter is pretty easy because they are usually all over. That wasn't my first step though. First, I needed to get the app and to save on data, I pulled into a parking lot and found some free wifi to use to make that happen. #thanksrandombusiness

Once the app was on my phone, it was time to find a scooter for me and also for my three kids. Yep...it was a family fun night and we were going out on the town on Lime scooters. The app helps locate where the scooters are at so really, it was a matter of finding a parking spot and for us, 4 scooters that were nearby. Well, we did find some and then 2 other people came and took 2 just as we were walking up to them...so our search went on a bit more. If my kids had just walked faster...

The whole adventure was fun but there are a few things to know before you hop on a Lime scooter in Rochester...and some of these aren't even explained that well on the Lime scooter website:

Only move the scooter if you pay. Why? Well, they beep. I know...because we tried. We weren't trying to steal them, we were just trying to get them closer as we got things figured out. I would suggest NOT doing that.
How many accounts do you need? Well, for each scooter you want to use, you need an account, and those accounts need to be tied to a phone, email, or Facebook account. In our case, four people were riding which means four accounts had to get set up. Luckily, we have four phones in our family so we could set up accounts but we didn't have all of the phones with us. To be honest, this part was a bit frustrating and I would highly suggest looking into this before you go ride, especially if you are wanting to ride with multiple people, like a family. It is not impossible but it is challenging and you will need to get special codes to unlock the bike that are specific for each account and also lock them back up.
You pay per minute...but you can save some money. Promo codes! A quick little Google search and BAM! I saved a few bucks. Do a quick search before you even get to the scooters and you might be saving some cash too.
When you are done, you need to login to your account and end your ride. If you used your phone for your account, you log back in to the app with that phone number and the app will send another special code to that phone number. You MUST have that code to stop the bike from charging you and if you try to get the code too many times, it makes you wait a bit until you can try again. We learned this one the hard way...and remember, it charges by the minute so you literally just stand there waiting and paying.
They can go pretty fast! You don't have to go top speed...but you can. 😁 Two out of three of my kids thought that going super fast was awesome! The third, said, “It’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. I don’t like how it accelerates so quickly.”
Bonus Tip: The battery doesn't last forever. If you can, find a scooter that has a fully charged battery. One of our rides ended a little bit earlier than the others and so it was all muscle moving that scooter...but we still got to pay for that too.

Would I ride a Lime scooter again? Yeah, I'll put my helmet on and ride again, but probably only on the trails until I see real change happen on our roads, especially in downtown Rochester. I'm still seeing drivers texting while and to be honest, I'd rather not get hit because they are distracted.

Have you tried the scooters? Let me know what you thought of them. Send me a message on my Facebook page (Jessica On The Radio) or DM me on Instagram.

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