Riding on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées

My wife and I met up with our son in London who just finished a semester abroad in England on April 20th. Unlike last year's big vacation to Spain where we visited our other son who was studying in Madrid and where I did an all day tour along the Costa Brava from Gerona with Jaume from bikecat.com, this year's trip had no plans to ride a bike. We were visiting England and France and although it was tempting to try and fit in a real one day ride, I decided it wasn't practical with everything else on our itinerary. Without going into all the details of our 15 day trip, we did spend 4 nights at a very nice apartment in Paris, south of the Invalides. Once we got there, I remembered those wonderful bike rental stations they installed a couple years ago in Paris - Velib - http://en.velib.paris.fr/ . So I got the bug to rent one for a few hours and go for a ride.

My son and I got up early on May 1st and rented a couple of these beater bikes with a front basket, 3 speed internal gears and big gnarly tires and fenders. Our goal was to ride up to the Champs-Elysees and ride it from the Place de_la_Concorde on the east side to the Arc_de_Triomphe on the west side. As we were cresting the bridge over the Seine River, we started hearing what sounded like a bunch of turbo prop jet engines to our right adjacent to the entrance of the Louvre Museum park. We had no idea what it could be this early in the morning with very little traffic on the street. Then as we made it over the bridge, we saw to our rigt, over 100 new and vintage red and silver Ferrari's all revving their engines. It was a sight to behold. Just after we rode past them and turned left onto the Champs-Elyseees, all of these Ferrari's started to pull out. I got onto to the wide sidewalk but my son was still on the street as these high performance cars started flying by. My guess is that he ended up in 100's of photos that were being taken of these beautiful cars flying by.

What a thrill it was to ride on the finishing stretch on the final stage of the Tour_de_France. I had not ridden on a street bike like this in years. It was obvious that these rental bikes take a beating but it was still a lot of fun riding it. We ended up riding about 15 miles that morning. So now I have ridden my bike in 3 countries - USA, Spain and France.

Here is a nice view of that most historical street in Paris.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Champs-Elysées,_vue_de_la_Concorde_à_l'Etoile.jpg

One other bike-related note from our vacation to England and France. While waiting for the Eurostar at St. Pancras station in London, I wandered into a bookstore and came upon a most wonderful book that any distance cyclist would enjoy reading. The title of the book is "The Man Who Cycled the World", by Mark Beaumont of Scotland. In February 2008 he took over 60 days off the world record for circumnavigating the world. It is quite a read.

My next big ride is the Coach Hep Challenge in Bloomington, IN, this Saturday, May 14th. 65 miles of Morgan/Monroe and Brown county hills. Yee Ha !!!

Update on 06/16/2011:


Here is a picture of the Ferrari Meeting in Paris. It is dated from 2009, but it is almost exactly the way it looked when Kenny and I rode by back on May 1st. And they are parked in the exact same spot!!!!



http://www.flickr.com/photos/arka002/4008750437

I found a YouTube Video that has Kenny in it at the end. You really can appreciate the noise these cars create when so many drive by you. Right at the end, you will see Kenny ride by on his bike. You can faintly here him responding to me telling him to jump a curb!!!!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRC8qMcsc8M