Optimize Your Life. Ride a Bluebike.

Ancient philosophers spent centuries debating the secret to a good life. If they were alive today, they’d quickly realize that the answer is the Bluebike.

There are over a dozen Bluebikes stands around Harvard’s campus. For most people, they are street decorations. For Harvard Bluebikers, they represent the solution to a world of unpredictable shuttles and overwhelming schedules.

Making the most of our time here is important. There are too many things to do: student performances, conversations with professors, latke-hamantasch debates. So why settle for one Harvard thing a day when, with a Bluebike, you can do three?

Accustomed to everything being a five minute walk away in their first year, students experience a rude awakening when campus suddenly extends from the Charles River to the Quad. Undergraduates love to complain about the size of campus — so much so that every year in February and March, first-years pray to the “Housing Gods” that they aren’t Quadded.

Along with the excessive fussing about distance comes concern with spending time efficiently. Some undergraduates live in a perpetual “grind,” pulling all-nighters while chugging cans of Celsius. Their most-used word is optimization.

I propose the Bluebike as the solution to our seemingly too-large campus and overachiever mentality.

First, Bluebikes are time-saving machines. Instead of a 20-25 minute walk from a River house to the Quad, or the ambiguous wait for the Harvard shuttle to show up (if it ever does), Harvard students can make this trip in less than half the time with a Bluebike.

Second, Harvard offers a limited number of free helmets and bike lights, along with a discounted annual Bluebike membership for $98 — that’s $31 off the regular membership price. While pricey at face value, it’ll be worth it if you’re riding almost every single day of the school year and saving 30+ minutes each day. Time is money, people.

Third, Bluebikes provide a remedy to Harvard’s epidemic of scooter theft. There were 142 reports of stolen scooters and bikes to the Harvard University Police Department in 2023 alone. Bluebikes eliminate this worry: You just put the bike into the dock, and then walk away.

Now, biking is far from the perfect solution. For one, there’s the infamous black ice that Californians like me fear more than pre-meds fear an A-minus. Biking in Cambridge can be quite dangerous, especially if you’re on streets without a protected bike lane (of which there are far too many in Cambridge).

Others would argue biking does not offer the same social benefits as walking. The 2:00 a.m. walk back to the River after a slice from Joe’s Pizza is conducive to deep conversations. By no means does a Bluebikes subscription take this potential benefit away from you; it simply offers an alternative of unrivaled efficiency.

Before you join, one final word of warning: There happens to be a rapid migration of Bluebikes between 10:20 a.m. and 10:25 a.m., from the River and the Quad to only two Bluebike stations near William James Hall. If you don’t get there before all of the slots fill up, you’re out of luck for your 10:30 a.m. class.

There have been many times when I’m stranded at the corner of Quincy Street and Kirkland Street, asking myself, “Theo, why didn’t you just walk to class?” But then I think about optimization. And let’s be honest – we’re all optimization-obsessed freaks here, even if we resent it. So let’s accept that part of us and embrace the Bluebike.

It won’t solve all of your problems — but here’s hoping I’ll see you at a station soon.

Theo W. Tobel ’27, a Crimson Editorial comper, is a Philosophy and Neuroscience concentrator in Dunster House.