Velos

13-9-2010
Originally uploaded by cspatrick

Monday, September 13, 2010 Day 75
Thirty minutes of stair climbing this morning, plus ten minutes each way to get there. This is getting to be a pretty good routine. When we first moved into our apartment, I could barely make it up two of the three flights of stairs without huffing and puffing mightily, let alone the third flight. Now I can make all three without stopping.

The city has a bicycle rental program. There are various plans, ranging from one-time use or one-week use all the way up to a 3-month pass or an annual pass. We decided to try out the 50-hour thing first and see how that goes. We went to the TaM (the main transit office) to get the bicycle pass. We had to take our apartment contract, passeport, our RIB (proof of bank account) and 10€ each. They have to have our RIB in case we don’t return a bike, in which case they hit us up for something like 150€. The 10€ gets us 50 hours of bicycle use. In typical French bureaucratic fashion, this took 15 minutes of standing in line and another 20 or so of working with the clerk once we got up there, but we walked away with our little green cards. We will probably try them out by the weekend.