Ohh, what a nice feeling to be back in Europe again, not to be the “gringo” any longer but just one of the crowd, even though one with a recumbent bicycle (velo cuchĂ©). Here in Europe, still, the bike attracts a lot of attention everywhere and when I switch on my monster 4 LED Seoul P4 light I easily compete with the big Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Nexus (Lapsus) and Peugeot cars that circle around Arc de Triumph.
So, first thing I do today is to check for cycle paths online. And I don’t want to hold back the online resource I’ve found: Google for “zoomorama pistes cyclables” and you’ll get a wonderful, zoomable map of Paris with all the cycle paths highlighted.
Equipped with that I set out for the center, first riding along a channel for half an hour, checking in some bike shops whether they could repair my hydraulic disk brakes … but I wasn’t lucky in this respect.
Instead I got a feeling of Paris in December, at the beginning of probably yet another warm winter with more rain than cold. Almost all the leaves of the trees have fallen and the people are wrapped into dark winter clothes to protect them from the weather.
I reached the Seine river in the center and turned right, just to reach the Notre Dame where it got really touristy now. A guy from Uruguay started to talk to me and I realized how handy the little Spanish I know speak comes even outside Latin America and Spain. Notre Dame is an amazing building and maybe I’ll make it the next time to the inside - it’s actually already the third time I’ve been here, but no entry yet.
Then I continue on the southern side of the Seine towards the Eifel tower to take a picture almost 600 days after I’d been here the last time at the beginning of my tour, back then still the Beijing to Paris 2007 Carfree Rally.
And the afternoon was still quite young, so I decided to ride parts of the route of the Tour de France, namely the part between Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre. This time I even cycled with full speed, probably almost as fast as my colleagues on the bike Lance Armstrong, Klöden, Vinokurov, Zabel and many more do each year. But I was only doped with müsli and apples, of course
At the Louvre I decide to go back as the sun’s standing really low already and I don’t want to cycle in the night and rush hour in Paris traffic, even though I’ve found the drivers to be very respectful and care taking for the weaker users of the road, today.
I also have to tell you about the velib project which the city of Paris must have implemented sometime since I’ve been here in May 2005. For about 4 Euro a month you can check out bikes at public terminals and ride them through the city. And the people here seem to like them a lot: you can see them everywhere in the street, even in places like the giant roundabout at the Arc de Triomph I spotted some crazy guys in the middle of this massive stream of metal! Crazy, totally crazy!
So much from my side. I’ll go for the Paris Polyglot meeting now, as soon as I’ve copied the 170+ pictures of today’s shooting session over the bottle neck, the USB 1.1 interface on my old iBook, at a stunningly slow speed (1MB/sec) and some of them onto my flickr account to make them available to you.
Da hat sich Papas “TĂĽftelei” mit dem Licht ja gelohnt!
Jetzt schlieĂźt sich der Kreis langsam…
Den Heimweg kennst du ja noch
@Verena: Ja, die hatte sich auch schon in Süd Amerika bezahlt gemacht, auch wenn mein Licht sicher ausgereicht hätte um die Pupillen der Autler kleiner werden zu lassen
Hmm, das mit dem Heimweg wird ganz schön tricky, denn GPS habe ich nicht mehr, eine Karte habe ich ebenso wenig und französisch spreche ich null - kann also gut sein, dass ich wo ganz anders heraus komme als geplant und dort vielleicht gar kein Weihnachten gefeiert wird? 8-X
1 euro a day or 29 a year, there’s no monthly subscription at 4 euros for velib
Great article in all other respects. Great bike too! Good luck riding the streets of Paris.
Cheers from a Parisian in New York where the bike path network is growing everyday and we’re hopeful that a public bicycle program will unfold within the next couple years.
Luc
@Luc: Thanks for correcting me. I’d probably immediately go with the 29 Euro for a year if I’d live here for a while, what a great deal! The 4 Euro a month was just what somebody told be.
The (cycling) world gets a lot of news about cycling in the Great Apple, with the arrests at the Critical Mass rides and so on. I’ve also been watching quite some of these crazy messenger movies, a guy called Lucas Brunelle is shooting and showing them now all around the world.
Thanks for reading my blog and commenting and enjoy riding at the other side of the Atlantic! Good luck for the cycling network and maybe I’ll already see it on my next tour …