MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Some in the Twin Cities were treated Monday to a strange sight: bright green Nice Ride bicycles encased in 5,000 pounds of ice.

The Ice Ride bikes were displayed as part of a promotion to announce that Nice Ride will have those bikes out next week. Nice Ride says the bikes should be at stations on April 2 and that new stations – complete with bikes – should be up before that.

Bill Dossett, the executive director of Nice Ride, said the bikes in ice symbolize that spring is coming and that the bikes are back.

“We have 1,200 bicycles at Nice Ride, and so we spent the winter getting them all fixed up,” he said.

And since it already feels like the spring, the bikes are coming out sooner than they did last year.

“Yea, lots of people have been e-mailing, wanting us to get the bikes out,” Dossett said. “So we’re going as fast as we can.”

The bikes on ice were found in three locations: Uptown and Downtown in Minneapolis, and at Rice Park in St. Paul. Nice Ride will be expanding the number of stations in St. Paul this spring and summer with about 30 new stations.

There is a smart phone app called Spotcycle that can locate the nearest Nice Ride station to you. It even displays bike and bike dock availability.