Velibbing...or, it's like riding a bike...

Judging by my bike ride home today, Paris is full of two-wheeled idiots. This is not only their fault...I do partly blame the Mayor who introduced the concept of almost-free bike provision ever 300 metres (you insert you card, take a bike, bike it for up to half an hour for ' free' - there's an annual fee of 30 euros - then drop it off at the appropriate velib stand...and to be fair, it's a good idea and environmentally laudable), and I partly blame the 18 Kg, 3 non-breakable-gear, no-removable-parts, earth coloured bikes themselves for being far too heavy to bike at any speed, but mostly I blame the so-called cyclists who CANNOT RIDE A BIKE.

The other day, I had to negotiate a 30-strong group of tourists who had chosen to view Paris by velib. The problem is that bike lanes are only a few feet wide and overtaking slow moving tourist-monument-focused velibbers is not always a simple feat. Add to this the fact that are not, in fact, bike lanes everywhere and overtaking slow moving tourist-monument-focused velibbers can become a slightly more dangerous matter. Even when they are non tourist-monument-focused (but they are always slow moving), overtaking can be a lethal, well, undertaking. An essential component of completing your journey successfully (ie alive and relatively undamaged) is a matter of 1. being fast (biking at the speed of traffic greatly enhances your survivability factor) 2. being aggressive (confidence is not enough: you often have to fight for your space on the road) 3. experience: of traffic-light-changing cycles, the standard response of motorists (so that a loud horn blare in your ear doesn't scare the living daylights out of you and thereby knock you off your bike), how to prevent yourself being carved in two by a scooter, and what roads require extra vigilence (all if they are within the 75 Paris city limit but particularly those with openable car doors alongside them).

As the weather has been better, it came as no surprise to me today that the percentage of bikes on the road has increased around - by my estimate - 300 percent. It's now possible to distinguish cyclists according to one feature alone: those with their own bike, thereby by default non-velibbers, and the foolhardy velibbers. Velibbers don't have helmets. Proper cyclists do. Velibbers can't ride bikes. Proper cyclists can.

Today I was biking up one of the major routes home when I encountered a steady stream of crawling velibbers in front of me, requiring me to join the fast taxi-traffic (the worst kind) in the bus lane, only to round the next corner, find a comfortable distance between a car on my left and the parked door-openable cars on my right, when this time a SMART CAR (ha ha) forced itself between the two of us. There was no space for any kind of car, even if it was allegedly smart, and the shock of a wing mirror so close to my hip gave me a bit of a shock, and that was the closest I've come to eating pavement.

Sometimes, the fault is mine. There's a notorious spot where it is necessary to cross from the bus lane (where bikes can be happy) on the right hand side, across 4 lanes of traffic desperate to get home, to make a left turn but to end up on the right hand side of that road, where the bus lane is. A bus was passing very close so the non-velib cyclist in front of me stopped (sensibly). The bus passed, I pulled out, but misjudged it and received a long honk from the taxi behind me.

Two advantages of the velibbing I suppose is that cars are more aware of cyclists who can't bike and are therefore (hopefully) more vigilant, improving everyone's lives. And secondly, all those velibbers must have come from somewhere, which might give me a quieter scooter run in the mornings.

The other road users, I discovered yesterday, are the French national cycling team...with full on leg-wax, lycra all-in-ones, fancy bikes, helmets and cleats. I only saw the back of them as they thrashed me home, even on the scooter.

Scotland