In the past few days I've been unable to post my regular useless crap, as I was in Paris. Somehow I felt obligated to take my wife to the place we went on our honeymoon 5 years ago. Ah yes, it's been 5 years already.
So in Paris, what is it that people do? I've learned that basically they all hang around at streetcorners trying to sell you (fake?) gold and (fake!) Armani scents, or tiny little Eiffel towers or well... anything at all basically. If it's not fixed to something else, they'll sell it to you (or die trying).
As
Jessica Alba already proved, the rent-a-bike plan in Paris works. At nearly every streetcorner you will find a load of racks with a bike attached to it that you can rent. Whether the bikes are nice or not, I'll leave that up to you. I at least think it's a noble setup to get all the city to ride a bike.
The weather was awesome, which obviously may have helped the people to come out of their homes and hit the road by bike instead of by Metro. As our rediscovery of Paris went along, we popped by the Peugeot showroom at the Champs Elysées, which had some nice and interesting cars, as well as a collectors item bike as the Peugeot company exists 200 years. As I currently ride a Tiagra setup bike, and I don't really see a downside on Tiagra (yet?) this - imho - sexy looking bike might be the replacement of the 2002 OCR at some point.
Though I think this TT concept of Peugeot is not going to be admitted by the UCI yet.
Obviously in a major city there is a SS/FG scene. Bike messengers woosh by once in a while on a SS bike at the same speed the cars go by, and sometimes faster the closer you get to the city centre
SS/FG is not my scene, so I skipped getting pictures of that, though I actually think it's admirable that people have the balls to ride actual traffic like I've seen in Paris. Cars ride alongside at distances you think a bike won't fit through, even though a bike messenger just proved them wrong. When pedestrian traffic is actually too busy on one side of the path through a park, why not just hopping over a park bench with your (awesome) MTB? I've seen them do nearly everything I though would be impossible in traffic like that, and either they're crazy as hell, or just incredibly good on a bike. A combination of both would be possible as well...
One thing I missed snapping a picture off, was a - imho - beautiful young woman on a Specialized road bike that zoomed by at about 50km/h, tagging along with the motorized traffic. I simply owe it to her mentioning this here. She obeyed each and every rule I could think of and looked pretty darn hot in her spandex kit.
I know some of you might want to know what exact type the Specialized was, but I just can't tell. I was too amazed that the only road cyclist in Paris was actually a woman, especially with looks like that. Basically, I was too busy finding a hanky for my drool (to make sure my wife didn't see drool over another woman).
So that was a basic impression of the past few days of cycling I've seen, as I wasn't able to actually ride a bike. So now I'm back at home and I have to start eating normally again. Time to get rid of that extra body fat that's been tagging along for the past years and get to race weight.
Oh wait. I'm going to bed first, dreaming of the Jane Doe on a bike.