It’s the hard times that make the good times so sweet.
We wanted to ride bikes along the Seine and I had nixed a 3 hour tour that my Mom had found. It had seemed too long and I just wanted to rent bikes and wander around ourselves. It felt like a good idea at the time.
Once we arrived we found bikes all over the place. Uber Lime, Velib, mopeds. They were everywhere. I checked my Uber ap, saw how to rent them, and said, “We got this”!
We, in fact, did not have it.
Long story short, you needed an individual Uber account to rent multiple bikes and Truck and G didn’t have it. We were having service problems due to – what was starting to be no service due to a worldwide roaming data issue with a carrier for US travelers. The Wifi was slow and even walking up to the apartment to download Uber wasn’t working!
We spent about 10 minutes trying that, at the same time I was trying to research how to rent Velib bikes. We saw a guy do it. We could either get a Navigo card from the Metro (5m walk away) or it said there were data kiosks every 300 feet. After another few minutes, we realized the large black tower with advertising on it had the sign-up computer on the other side. Woo!
Figuring out what it said in French, and getting some of the screens to simply move forward after we put data into the fields was SO TOUGH. So frustrating. After 25 minutes, Gregg gave up on us and said he didn’t want to ride bikes anymore and went upstairs. But my Mom and I kept working at it! We finally got a ticket, and then I started working on the next three. She started looking at the bikes with Truck and trying to figure out how you could tell if the electric battery was full. You could barely see the screens to even type in the bike code and special code to unlock them
But we did it. All four of us got bikes and slowly took off. The streets were crazy but we made a few turns and were having fun I was trying to find the ramp down to the Seine (some had stairs, others had ramps) because I knew on the side I had been running on, it was cobblestones but on the far side I had seen smooth pavement. We just wanted smooth pavement!
Well, there was no smooth pavement. And after riding for a short while, the cobblestones ended and the path was blocked and we had to turn around. Truck also admitted that his bike had no charge. He was okay riding a regular bike but it was heavier and he was slower. We offered to trade bikes with Griffin but he refused. To be clear, JJ and I offered up Griffin – haha – but G was a good sport about it. We decided to keep going. It was really nice in the shade and other than not wanting to be riding on cobblestones, it was awesome.
Halfway through our ride, after the cobblestones!
During Covid, they had designated these huge bike riding lanes in all the streets and other than a few weird spots of traffic, it felt really safe.
We kept going and somehow made a turn that got us going downhill and into this amazing tunnel. Every inch of the tunnel was covered in graffiti, it was perfectly chilly, and it felt like a secret bike passageway that we got to be “in” on the secret. It then opened up to the perfect pavement next to the Seine.
What a moment! It was glorious, we were laughing and smiling and having the best time.
(I wish my vertical video uploads on YouTube would not be SHORTS so I can actually embed them here? But alas… I can’t quite figure it out after 30 seconds… so I am linking to my lovely memory!)
We made a turn off the Seine and took a break before heading back home. We started back up, made a left and as I had been doing the WHOLE time, kept checking back to make sure my chickies were following me. I saw G, I saw JJ but I didn’t see Truck. I finally stopped. Where was Truck? He had disappeared!
Ahh the drama. We went back. We waited. We called. We texted. Where was Truck?
He actually did text back fairly quickly. (Texting was still working!) He said he got lost but he would navigate back and was okay. He said to keep going.
We tried calling again. Maybe? I can’t remember. Either way, we headed back. I knew right where we were because I had run around the neighborhood the morning before. It was a straight shot down, we made a quick right and were delivered back to the cafe where all the bikes were “parked” in front of.
What I remember best is just sitting down and lookin at each other and thinking, “There is NO WAY we can go back home without Truck”. Also, when you “return” the bikes to their charger, if there is no room, you have to wait to return your bike. So I tried riding around a few blocks trying to find how to return the bike to an empty station and all the stations were filled! And I almost got ran over because the nice bike lane disappears after awhile and then it’s crazy traffic!
I had to laugh though, I rode around in circles for 10 minutes after telling my Mom to text me if a spot opened up. What happened when I rode up? An empty spot RIGHT in front of her and no text. haha – Thanks Mom! But it worked out.
We had some water, G had some apple juice, and it literally took at least 15 minutes for Truck to come back. He tried explaining where he went and what went wrong. I explained about the buddy system and going back to where we last saw each other. Not sure what lesson we learned or if it sunk in…
But the entire experience was hilarious and lovely, from struggling to figure out these darn bikes, to “we were going to figure it out or die trying dammit”, to the triumph of doing it (even if Gregg abandoned us!), and the freeing feeling of riding in the perfect spot on the Seine river in France.
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