I have a bike!

Alright, I haven't been awesome at updating this - sorry but internet is sort of a pain. I don't have it at home and I feel bad using it for too long at school because there are only 4 computers for all the teachers to share in the teacher's lounge - so I tend not to stay on for much longer than a quick email check or google search. Also, Facebook and Youtube and other video streaming sites are blocked so I'm pretty bad at updating on Facebook as well.

But anyway, I just got an awesome deal on a used bike today and I want to write about it - and the bike ride home on it....

I've been meaning to get a bike here because as nice as the bus system is - it stops around 12:30pm every night and so if I want to stay out late, I'm pretty much Cinderella (that is, when the clock strikes midnight, my ride home figuratively turns into a pumpkin). Plus, it's been really beautiful here recently and I've really wanted to take a nice bike ride around to explore the surrounding neighborhoods. Also, the grocery store, laundromat, baker and swimming pool are all about a 15-20 minute walk away and on a bike that same trip will take me about 2-3 minutes.

Thus, I asked around and finally decided to give le bon coin (http://www.leboncoin.fr) a shot. Amazingly enough someone had just posted a good condition Peugeot bike in my size about 30 minutes earlier for 25 euros! I gave them a call and a very nice lady answered. I told her I was interested in looking at the bike and asked her when I could meet her - at first she said "well...I guess I could meet you around 5pm or so....unless you're free right now". I was free, so I caught a bus to her part of town (a bit past downtown, about a 20 minute bus ride from me) and met her at her apartment where she showed me the bike. It was in perfect shape, very well maintained and after a quick refilling of the tires it was good to go...unfortunately I wasn't quite so agile off the bat.

As you can see in the below picture the pedals come with a foot attaching loop so you can pull up on the pedals as well as push down - this also means your feet are sort of stuck in the pedals once you get going so quickly taking a foot out to steady yourself when you pause, etc is a little trickier and takes some getting used to. You may also notice the brakes on the bike are all the way forward (my old bike in Portland is IDENTICAL to this one, except that one had brake handles along the top as well as the front of the handlebars - so you didn't have to be horizontal on the bike to reach the brakes). Anyway - the woman wanted me to test the bike out and I did and looked much like I did when I first learned to ride a bike - unsure and wobbly. I finally just explained to her that I wasn't used to the footclamps or brake placement and that I would need a few minutes to get myself sorted out before I really gave it a go - she laughed and told me to be careful on my way home. She took my money (we settled on 20 euros, because she thought I was nice) and left me alone. I then dismantled the foot-clips as best I could without tools (though I'm putting them back on and getting used to them in the safety of my car-free path to the grocery store) and did a few laps around a parking lot before setting off into the hectic downtown traffic on my way home.

My new bike.

I pretty easily got into the groove by the time I made it acros le pont de la république into downtown. I wandered around in circles a bit downtown trying to figure out the bikepaths that led to le pont de Charles de Gaulle which leads towards my place (eventually I gave up and just rode with traffic because it seemed the bike paths went around in circles and weren't actually going where I wanted to go). Then I was on the main highway out of downtown headed towards Planoise (my neighborhood). Somewhere around here I heard a metal bit fall off somewhere and I stopped the bike to see what it was - surprised that the bike I thought was so nice was falling apart already. I picked up a piece of black metal that didn't look like a part of the bike and - confused - put it in my pocket then continued on. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that it was piece of my belt buckle which had fallen off when my belt broke (I guess the angle I was sitting at was too much for it). Luckily there is a bike path all along this main road (though it's not super clearly marked where I should go at some of the round-abouts) and it's not too steep(half of it is a gently uphill, and the other half is a gentle downhill).

Anyway, about 40 minutes and a few wrong turns later I made it home. Now I just need to go off to the cheap shopping district to try to get a decent bike lock at the sporting good store - and a new belt.