We're breaking in a new transportation system they've just launched here in the Cuauhtémoc borough of the city where we live, meant to encourage bicycle use by copying countries that have already done it with some success.

We immediately looked into it and did everything required to sign up for the program. It all happens online, with a credit card for the deposit. Once we'd completed the paperwork, the cards took about ten days to arrive. Funny thing is, from the moment they started installing the stations (I walk through that part of the city often and I notice things), I could see that certain privileged souls, almost certainly government people or their family and friends, were already using the bikes from day one.

Everything looks very professional, and I hope it works that way given a bit of time, because I understand things can't be perfect at the start. Our cards arrive and we immediately try to activate them, but mine won't activate, so we had to make several calls, verify information, and so on, until it was finally sorted out. The young people who answer the phones are very pleasant but not particularly clear, which is pretty much how language gets handled here in Mexico. After going around in circles for a while, we got it resolved.

There's a long weekend coming up, one of those holidays they shuffle forward or back depending on convenience, so instead of falling on March 21st it ended up being declared a holiday a week earlier. We read the instructions, and the Sunday before we set out to pick up our bikes at one of the many stations in La Condesa and headed toward Reforma.

Since it was Sunday, we reached Reforma with almost no traffic, and when the half hour (the maximum time you can keep a bike) was nearly up, we docked the bikes and waited the ten minutes you're supposed to wait before taking another.

It took a little longer than that, but we got two more bikes and continued our ride along Paseo de la Reforma all the way to Avenida Juárez, looping back to the Jardín del Arte on Sullivan. There we returned the bikes again, at the Villalongin station.

Along the way, we really enjoyed watching how, month by month, the number of cyclists, skaters, and people making their way through the city on every kind of wheeled vehicle keeps growing, all of them taking full advantage of the Sunday car-free zone that shuts down this part of the city to traffic.

Bicycles have always been a passion of mine, and honestly so has the scooter, which I rode for seven years, hauling a child, groceries, a violin, the whole production.

I hope the use of these bikes keeps growing, but a word of warning: when you return one, check that the indicator light isn't blinking, because our second return didn't go smoothly at all. At the Villalongin station in front of the Jardín del Arte, the light just kept blinking, so we had to call Ecobici to do something about it, because if you don't fix it and the minutes and hours tick by, they charge your card. And if you go over 24 hours, they charge you 5,000 pesos, which makes sense as a theft deterrent, but mistakes happen, and you become a victim of the growing pains if you don't catch it in the moment.

Again, the Ecobici agent Jonathan sorted out the problem, but we lost half an hour, and he warned us that we might not be able to take another bike for at least an hour. Still, about twenty minutes later we tried our cards at a Reforma station (having lost all faith in the Villalongin one) and were allowed to take bikes a third time to ride home.

I hope they add mirrors to these bikes, because in a city like ours, where there is no culture of respect for pedestrians, cyclists, or motorcyclists, they're absolutely essential.

On the subject of news, I want to tell you that I no longer see Gastón. I used to see him in the street, in the park, in the lobby of my building, and he always greeted me warmly. He's a handsome medium-sized greyhound, and we watched him grow over the months because he arrived as a puppy.

Around the same time Gastón disappeared, a couple of vans also vanished from the parking area, one of them especially noticeable because it almost never moved, or perhaps never moved at all. It sat right in the path of the cart we residents use to bring up our grocery bags, and being a large old vehicle it blocked the way completely, but now it's gone.

It turns out the owners of Gastón and those vans were murdered inside one of the trucks, in one of those shootouts that terrify those of us who live in such a violent city, though the whole thing would bear closer examination.

Because yesterday I found out that this pleasant, good-looking couple who owned Gastón apparently ran the kind of business nobody admits to, the kind that those of us who have never been involved in such things, and would never dream of it, don't expect to find among ordinary neighbors.

The man was tall, athletic, shaved-head in the current fashion or perhaps just thinning on top, but handsome, I'd say. Friendly and charming, someone we'd chatted with once or twice about nothing in particular.

She was much younger, as tends to be the style these days and especially when the man's financial situation (as seemed to be the case here) is good, or better than good. She was slim, fashionable, the kind who exercised, and pretty. Well. They killed them both, and now I don't know what will become of Gastón.

Sanuk