Vélo Vie

I saw this guy while on an early morning run - I guess
he didn't make it home after a boozy night.

Paris has become one of the great biking cities in the world (up there with Amsterdam and Kisumu, Kenya). Our arrival here in the holiday month of August has given me, and to a lesser extent, Shirley and Jemma, a chance to enjoy getting to know Paris "en vélo".

The easiest part of cycling in Paris is Velib - the city-wide bike share program. By paying a low daily, weekly or yearly fee you can go to any one of the thousands of Velib bike stands around the city and just get going.

We have 6 stations with 180 bikes within 5 minutes walk of our house, and there are 180 stations with 20,000 bikes all around Paris and the suburbs. Paris is about 8 km north/south and 12 km east/west so it takes less than an hour to bike from one end of the city to the other.

While I love going places by metro, bus and tram, I get a special joy getting around (and inevitably getting lost) by bike.  It feels like a better way to get to know my way around and to enjoy this beautiful city.

There is a large number of bike lanes and bikes get to use the safer bus lanes as well.  Cars are just a little more aware of cyclists as well because there are so many of them about. This is good because most people don't wear helmets, which would have been unthinkable for me, not to mention Shirley and Jemma, back in Toronto.  In Paris, it's the way things are done here. 

Coulée verte bike path

Bike path on a bridge

There are also a growing number of "coulée verte" or green corridors that wind their way through the city.  On Friday, I took one of these routes on a 45 minute ride coming back from getting our residents parking permit sorted out (Paris bureaucracy stories for another post). It was absolute bliss pedaling easily through a well paved, tree-lined bike path in the middle of town.  Even some of the bridges over the Seine have bike paths down the middle.

Road rash or impressionist
masterpiece?

As well as cycling to get from A to B in the city, I am getting back into cycling as part of my triathlon training.  After a bad start with a fall on my first big ride into the countryside, I am back on the bike again and enjoying one of the most popular French sports after football, boules and cigarette flicking.  

Less traffic early in the morning

They take road cycling pretty seriously here.  I was out this morning doing a few laps around the outside of the Longchamp horse race track.  When I started around 8:15, there were only a few dozen riders going around the 3.6 km circuit. It was fun to hang onto and occasionally lead the medium speed peletons, while watching the faster pace lines zip by (I was averaging low- to mid-30's km/h, the fast guys were up above 40 km/h).  But by 9:30, the number of riders grew so large that at one point I was caught in the middle of a peleton of at least 50 riders with at least a couple of riders on either side of me: no way to speed up, slow down or turn left or right. It scared me so badly that I called it a day after that. I won't be joining the Tour de France any time soon!

Thanks for reading and as always, you can see additional photos at my Google+ photo page.