velo'v/hate

so lyon, being the wonderful city that it is, was one of the first to implement a city-wide biking system. there are bike stands all over the city and they cost next to nothing. in fact the first half-hour costs exactly that: nothing. this combined with lyon's rather flat terrain and ubiquitous bike paths and bike lanes make it ideally suited for velo'ing, or, i should say, velo'v-ing. (they found a cutesy name for it, naturally.) the one catch? you need a bank card with a 'puce' - a little chip that, for some reason, is only put in european cards.

and so the saga began..

i waited three weeks for my bank card (they forgot to order it), four weeks for my pin code (they had to send it twice), a week to recover my card (eaten by the atm) and, later, several days to find a bank that would 'unblock' the card so i could actually use it.

once i finally had a working bank card i assumed there was nothing standing in the way of my velo'ving. i went to one machine, it accepted my card, gave me a receipt, told me to wait and.. told me the machine could not give me a velo'v card. no reason. just couldn't. tried another machine.. it didn't work at all. tried a third machine, out of sheer masochism - same story as the first. i gave up, assuming there was something wrong with my card. or that maybe it was just france being france.

then today, on a whim, i tried a machine across town and, much to my surprise, it worked on the first try. it was wonderful! i biked down rue de la république, the major pedestrian streeet/commercial center of the city and then across the river to my apartment. it was absolutely delightful; i think i was actually grinning the entire time. when i wasn't dodging wheelchairs and small children, anyway.

we got off to a rocky start, but now i'm totally smitten.
i love velo'v!