France by Bike Part 6: Mistakes, Costs, Lessons Learned

[I put this series of posts in book form if you’d find that more helpful. It’s pretty much the same without the pictures, videos, and clickable links. You can buy it as a physical book or ebook on Amazon.]

What I’d do Differently: Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned

On our refrigerator at home I’ve hung a piece of paper that says “Fail More”. You are going to make mistakes in any new thing you take on. Forgive yourself now. It’s how we learn. Failing means you tried. I started this series with a quote from Markus Stitz: “Not every adventure has to be epic.” It speaks to what some call the tyranny of excellence. At least in the US, we consume a relentless parade of marketing touting “performance” and “achievement” as if every activity has to be undertaken with those things as the only goal. I feel like it actually discourages most of us from trying those things for fear of looking like a failure. But, what if we just didn’t buy into that? I encourage you to make mistakes and be less excellent, to perform at a comfortable level and to be proud of that. To just have fun. To encourage you, I’m going to share some of the mistakes we made, from start to finish on this trip. Not every little missed turn or mistake of pronunciation, but the ones that stuck in my mind and actually helped me make this whole thing a bit better. After all, the mistakes are often where the memories are.

Mistakes Made

I’ve already listed a few mistakes made in buying the wrong train ticket and booking an apartment in the wrong town. But here are a few more.

• Staying in Paris that first night could have lightened a LOT of stress at the end of the trip. If you stay in a Hotel at the beginning, it’s highly likely they will let you store your bike boxes, bags, shells, or whatever, until you get back and stay a night or two at the end of your trip. This will save you having to track down bike boxes when you get back. I spent a full day riding around Paris trying to line up a back up supply of boxes (unnecessarily it turned out) instead of enjoying the city. Alternatively…
• Plan your return to Paris on a day that the bike shop that is saving boxes for you is open so you have them in hand a day or two before your flight.
• We probably should have gone in June or July. I had a lot of good reasons for choosing to go in April, then delaying until May. Airfares were significantly cheaper. The crowds were less. The weather was cooler. However, the weather was cooler because of spring rains. This led to lots of diversions and a few less than pleasant days. I’m sure it rains in June and July too but the rivers have a chance to come back down which means fewer diversions and flooded areas. July might have started to get on the hot side of things but I think the crowds would have been tolerable. Additionally, traveling during the busy season would have meant more open restaurants and campgrounds, more frequent trains and busses, bike shuttles across the St. Nazaire Bridge, and so on. Europeans tend to take their vacations in August, so keep that in mind as well. August also tends towards hot and dry so I’d personally avoid it, but if that’s when you can go, I wouldn’t let it stop you. I’m a fan of shoulder season travel. I think September can also be hot but starting to cool off later in the month and October is likely to be a bit risky with cold.
• Assuming we’d gone in June, we should have gone ahead and camped and I should have done a better job of researching likely hotel bills. I would not recommend camping in May due to the prevalence of rainy days. But, camping is cheaper. My research suggested anywhere from free up to $25/night per tent. In addition, the videos and books I read before going and since suggest that you end up meeting more people this way. There’s just something about being outside around other people that opens up chances to interact. I think they are more open to tent campers rolling up at the last minute as well so it reduces some of the logistical stress, but probably adds a bit of stress if you can’t find somewhere with spaces
• I wish we’d stretched out the riding days a bit more. By this I mean instead of cycling for 4-5 hours straight, taking some time to sit in cafés along the way or to stop and explore some of the places we passed by. Later in the trip when our destinations got further apart, of course, this would not be as doable but the shorter days lent themselves to leisure.
• In a similar manner, we should have done more to go in and explore around the towns we visited. Perhaps camping would have made this more challenging but exploring the small towns a bit would have been fun and interesting. Many of them have little local museums as well.
• Meals and breakfasts proved disappointing. The hotel breakfasts tended towards expensive and processed and the reliance on Pizza as a main dinner staple meant we didn’t sample as much of the local cuisine as we could have. Part of that was due to it being an easy choice after a long day but also partly due to the lack of vegetarian options and, honestly, probably due to lack of knowledge on our part. We did end up having some nice French meals and we enjoyed most of those (I’m looking at you, Blois sausage.) That said, if we’d camped, we probably would have eaten even less French meals but also saved a fair amount of money.
• The Taxi into Paris! I read several places that you shouldn’t take a fare from any taxies being hocked inside the airport. You should go to the Taxi queue and explain what you need to the queue manager there. In my jet lagged state, I failed to heed that advice. There is a minimum fare into Paris and we paid about double that. Perhaps it goes up for a van but I ended up feeling like I got taken. If I’d been quoted that price at the taxi stand, I would have been ok with it but I didn’t do that. Oh well, live and learn.
• Bike fit. I’d tried to line up a professional bike fit appointment, but I didn’t try very hard and it never happened. My handlebars were lower than I’d have liked leading to some hand numbness and perhaps some of that knee pain. I might have avoided some of that with a proper fit. I’ve since gotten some new handlebars that raise me into a slightly more upright posture and that seems to have helped. That said, I was never miserable on the ride.
• Here’s a big one. We probably should have ridden in the other direction. Perhaps we didn’t notice the wind as much if it was at our back but I don’t think we ever had significant wind in any direction on our ride. I guess we had some near the coast, but not much. Riding in the other direction would have saved us some money and hassle at the end when we went to Normandy. We wouldn’t have gotten to see Colmar and Strasbourg which are amazing places, but lots of places in France are amazing. I guess it depends on your before or after ride plans.
• Without a doubt, the BIGGEST MISTAKE I made was not going sooner. I let the imagined enormity of it intimidate me and I shouldn’t have. It did end up being expensive, sure, but the experience was with it. Parts of it were challenging but there was only one day when I worried we might not make it and that was when my knee started really hurting. And honestly, that would have been disappointing but fine. We would have gone and done something else fun, but the riding and navigation was way easier than I’d told myself for all those years. I hope this is one mistake you can learn from too.

Lessons Learned

• Despite everything I’d read online, when we reached St. Nazaire, I discovered that the taxis that supposedly would take you across the bridge were no longer operating that service and that the bike shuttle program wouldn’t start running until July. At loss for what to do, I asked for help. That’s two big lessons (well maybe three).
  • Services change over time and may vary with the seasons. I read numerous sites talking about the bike shuttle but I didn’t pay enough attention to the dates. Some didn’t even mention dates. I mentioned earlier how we ran into a similar situation with a bus in the dolomites.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask for help, especially outside the major cities. People are almost always good and want to help well behaved visitors. In our case it was the desk attendant at the hotel and person at the tourist info section who made calls for us. It made life so much easier.
• Bikes appear in the oversized luggage area at CDG. I learned this beforehand actually and I’m glad I did. The area wasn’t particularly well marked nor was it attended. Still we found our bikes easily and quickly.
• The French have a reputation in the US for being rude. I think that must come from the days when Americans only went to Paris, a big city. People in any big city tend to be a little more callous and prickly in my opinion. The French people we met, with that one exception, were all very friendly and accommodating. I was also amazed by their approach to life. Things sometimes break down or get complicated, but they assume they’ll be able to work through it and figure it out together and make something work. I loved that.
• Know how to adjust your gears before you go. There are little adjusters on the cables that can tighten and loosen the cable a bit. On a long ride like this, the cable may stretch a bit or things may get out of alignment during transportation. Knowing how that system works will make life easier when the bike starts missing or skipping gears. I’d also suggest learning how to “index” your gears but that’s probably not as crucial.
• Pumping up tires with a travel pump is a hassle. I’m investing in a small electric pump going forward. 
• Biking around cities in France is amazing, especially Paris. The infrastructure is amazing. The car and bus traffic is respectful (as are most of the cyclists). Rather than trying to figure out how to get the right metro or bus, how to buy tickets, or paying for an uber or taxi, you just hop on your bike and you can go wherever you want, whenever you want. It’s wonderful. I’m sure it’s different on snowy or rainy days, but cycling in French cities is a joy.
• Personnel do not like it when you try to ride your bike on the platform, even if it’s empty.
• Elevators are small compared to American standards but you can typically fit a bike in by tipping it vertically and not sharing the space. Taking the loaded bikes up and down stairs to get from one train platform to the next can be awkward and cumbersome, so sometimes the elevators are worth the extra wait.
• Ortlieb Ultimate 6 front bags are great but I’m not sure they are worth the extra hassle when disassembling and reassembling the bikes. I’m currently exploring other options as I learn more about this sport.
• While car drivers are fairly respectful and will generally give you room, that doesn’t apply as much on main roads where the speed limits are faster. We had to use a couple of these as detours and it added some stress as they whizzed by.
• On that note, while you are required to use a bell, nobody seems to use them outside of cities. I had numerous occasions where a sport biker would blaze past from behind and I had no idea they were there. It’s pretty startling. For that reason, I wish I’d had a rear view mirror system of some sort.
• Watch some videos before leaving and practice reattaching and adjusting the derailleur and brakes. It’s not hard or complicated unless you are trying to figure it out from scratch in a train station with jet lag.
• This is a big one. Biking is fun!. It just is. It’s low impact, casual exercise and a great way to travel. It’s fast enough to cover ground but slow enough to take in the place you are exploring. And it feels good. Even when you get a little out of breath.

Things I Wish I’d Taken and Didn’t Need to Take

Wished I Had:

• Mini Zip ties. Several broke off in the packing that held the cables to the frame. It wasn’t a huge deal but it was annoying to have to go find them. They came in handy later when I needed to repair the spoke protector on the rear wheel. They are small, light, and cheap.
• Fenders/Mud guards. Perhaps we wouldn’t have needed these if we’d gone later in the year. I did buy some cheap plastic one’s for the front that kept some mud off, but proper guards would have kept our legs cleaner and less muddy.
• Mini USB pump. We didn’t need to do much pumping of the tires but when we did, using the little hand pump got tiresome quickly. The new battery powered units seem like a good alternative.
• AirTag bike attachments. You can get little things to hide the AirTags on the bike so thieves won’t notice them (maybe). Luckily we didn’t need this but a few dollars is often worth the peace of mind.
• Rear view mirror system. It’s nice to be able to see behind you when other bikers are racing up behind you or you want to change lanes in car traffic. You can of course crane your head around, but a mirror would have been nice. 
• A different front bag system. The Ortlieb Ultimates are great but having to take them off and  on when unpacking and packing the bike was a hassle. They also made it tough to mount the headlight had we needed that. Definitely take time to try out and refine your system if you have the chance.

Glad I Did

• Extra hex nuts for any that rattle loose. I actually had some of these with me and used one to reattach my rear rack when one rattled away. They are small, inexpensive, and unobtrusive and pretty handy if you do need them.
• Multitool with pliers. A must have when you are reattaching the brakes or adjusting the derailleur.

Didn’t Need

• Front Bike lights. I’d have taken them anyway, but we never used them. However, if you are playing accommodation by ear, you may end up biking into the evening and they’re required for that and pretty helpful.
• Rain pants. We wore ours briefly one time despite all the rain. It never got cold enough or rained hard enough to warrant them. Our rain jackets kept our core mostly dry and we took synthetic clothing which dried pretty quickly as soon as the rain stopped. That said, if you go in colder weather, they could be the difference between arduous and perilous.
• Extra clothes. I always seem to take too many clothes and I did it on this trip too. Check the packing list for my recommendations.

Expenses

I’ll discuss getting hurt in Paris and getting home at the end but the emotional pain came when I ran the final numbers for the trip. Even though this will be a short section, I’ve put it off to nearly last when writing this up. Mainly because I didn’t want to see that total.

When I look at the final number I find it, well, staggering. But then when I start to put it into context, it quickly looks more reasonable. Let’s face it, any trip to Europe will be expensive. Airfare, food, and lodging will likely top your expenditures. For this trip, we’ve added a lot of gear too. Luckily, we continue to use that gear, so we continue to get value for our money. Again, Rationalization is the enemy of any budget.

I dove deep into what I bought and why in the first post in this series if you missed it: How I Rode A Bike Across France (And You Should Too): Part 1

I’ll start out with some general categories and then provide a spreadsheet with a bit more detail afterward. I’ll try to distinguish which costs are variable and which are optional and where we could have saved money. After Basel, we spent a week or so visiting Colmar, Strasbourg, Bayeux (and the Omaha Beach), and Mont St. Michel. I’ve done my best to exclude those expenses here. I do however include the three days in Paris since we’d have done that anyway and I highly recommend spending some time there.

You can probably imagine some of the biggest expenses right off the bat. I have plane tickets, bikes and gear, accommodation, and food. Train tickets and mistakes are up there too. Surprisingly, activities stayed fairly low.

Let’s start with the airfare because that’s a big one. It’s also pretty variable based on season, airline, seating class, origin and departure, and the market. Luckily for us, I was able to use Delta Sky Miles to get us to France. I still had to pay the fees and taxes that go along with any ticket and that came to $190 for two tickets. I also went ahead and purchased the ticket insurance for both for an additional $56 for two tickets. While you’ll find a ton of variation, I would guess that tickets from a town like Bozeman, MT wold run anywhere from $800 per ticket to $1500+ for an economy fare before Memorial Day. That could easily double after the holiday. Again, that’s a shot in the dark but I feel comfortable with that guesstimate. You can generally find cheaper tickets before memorial day and more expensive later. After labor day, I would expect prices to come back down as well.

ETIAS was not yet in force so that was not an expense but will likely cost you 20€ each.

The next big purchase for us was the bikes. As mentioned, I chose to “invest” in bikes I thought we’d use afterwards and we have definitely used them, not for touring but for longish day rides and around town. They are better for that than the mountain bikes. Each Surly Ogre came in at $1800 and we bought them new. We could have gone with cheaper options but I feel pretty happy about our choice.

Our total accommodations bill came to an eye watering $3100.00. Yikes. So much for costing not much more than camping. If we’d traveled in June and camped every night, I sincerely think this would have been closer to $750. Credit Card touring is not for the faint of wallet. While I would not have wanted to camp in all the rain we rode through, had we camped even half the days, we could have saved over $1000 even with additional bag fees. We also could have tried organizations like Warm Showers that provides often free places to sleep or camp. That’s a big mistake on my part and it still makes me cringe.

On the spreadsheet, you will see entries for “city tax”. This is a room fee that the hotel pays on to the city government. It varies by location. We generally pay this at hotels in the US too, it’s just generally rolled into the total bill. In Europe, it’s usual to pay this separately, often in cash. If your VRBO host asks for it, don’t assume you are getting ripped off. It’s generally a few euros per night for each adult. Sometimes municipalities don’t charge for children, but sometimes they do.

We all have to eat, pretty much every day. We are not foodies but we did have some wonderful dinners without going to any fancy restaurants. Most of our lunches came from the grocery store as did two or three dinners and breakfasts. We paid for quite a few breakfasts at the hotels which I was not expecting and that added up. Some of those are rolled into the accommodation price and some were paid separately. For restaurants, I tallied nearly $1850 for the month for two people. That’s quite a bit since our grocery bill came to about $200. Had we camped and cooked at the sites, we could have saved a ton. We could still have likely had some nice meals but perhaps we wouldn’t have wanted to go back into town. It’s hard to say but I feel like we could have saved another $1000 here.

Of course, being newbies, we had to gear up all the sundry touring items that go with bike touring. Ortlieb bags for two people added up and we bought a tent that we ended up not taking but we also had things like helmets, lights, pedals (many new bikes don’t come with them), tubes, fenders, tools, oil, a European computer adapter, and more. If we’d chosen to camp we had a bunch of camping gear we could have taken with us such as sleeping bags, stoves, air mattresses, etc and you may have that too or can borrow it. If I take out the tent (which got lots of use afterwards), the gear budget came out to about $1600 total for the both of us. Ortlieb bags made up nearly $900 of that for two people. If we’d decided to camp, we could have included another $700 for the tent and $200 for the extra baggage but that could have made up for itself in accommodations. All in all, it was not cheap. We could have shaved a few dollars here and there, such as using our old helmets, but I don’t feel too bad about this one. 

I would never want to scrimp on experiences and activities along the way. I always get cranky about entrance fees and tours but they always seem worth it afterwards. We didn’t do too many activities on the second half of the trip but we still spent some money on chateaus and museums. Somehow it only came out to about $175. Well worth it I’d say. It helped that Anders was still a teen at the time and got several discounted or free tickets.

Speaking of tickets, we bought quite a few train rides and some buses and taxis. I’ll exclude the tickets from Basel to Normandy and back to Paris and I’ll add the mistaken tickets I purchased in with mistakes next but I do include the round trip to Poitiers and back. I feel like that was just something that is likely to happen when you travel. So train tickets, bus tickets, and taxi rides came to about $565 which is split nearly evenly between taxis and train tickets. Trains are relatively cheap in France, taxis are not.

For eSims and data we ended up spending $55 each for the month (total of $110) with Airalo. That’s about 35% less than I pay Verizon at home for less data. Damn those European socialists. (If you want to get $3.00 off your first purchase you can use code ‘ HENRY0515 ‘. I’ll also get $3.00 so you’ll be helping me out as well. )

Ok, mistakes was another pricey outflow and some of the mistakes are harder to quantify but I did pay too much for a taxi into the city, I did buy the wrong train ticket to St. Nazaire, and I did rent an apartment in the wrong city. I figure that came to about $30(extra), $117, and $75 respectively. Not a small number but not really budget busting either, especially compared to food and accommodations.

Linked you will find a spreadsheet that’s about as organized as I can make it. I hope you find it helpful. Some of the entries might not be clear and that’s because I pulled them from my statements and I can’t remember the exact names of things. Consider this a “rough” accounting. I may have missed a few smaller expenses and some of the smaller ones might be misallocated into the wrong category but nothing that would seriously alter the results. Also, as I mentioned, I used Delta SkyMiles for my plane tickets. Remember, you can save a lot of money on lodging and food and bikes so don’t let that big number at the end intimidate you.

Downloadable Spreadsheet

I’ve put together a spreadsheet of our expenses you view on Google Sheets. If you’d like to have an editable copy, you should be able to make your own copy that you can edit.

Totals

The final table shows total amounts for the trip for two people. I also provide a total minus my mistakes, bikes, and gear costs. You may have your own gear already but it accounted for roughly half of our expenses. I’ll reiterate that we continue to use that gear so I can rationalize that as a long term investment. If we’d have gone later and camped, I really do think we would have saved possibly another $2000 on lodging and food. If we were to do this trip again, having bought the gear and choosing camping, we’d probably have a total expense of just over $2000 per person for a 30 day trip plus airfare. Honestly, that’s a bargain, right?…Right?

Packing List

As I’ve made clear, much of the gear that you take will be particular your own wants and needs. I encourage you to use this list as a starting point for your own research. I could have taken more stuff and I could have taken less. The following is what we took and/or what I wish we’d taken. Hopefully this will help you start on your own packing list.

I’ve also put up a webpage based packing list that might be easier to navigate here: Henry’s EV6 Packing List

Resources for Planning

Planning this trip from scratch, meaning I knew next to nothing at the beginning, both intimidated me and intrigued me. While it seemed like a daunting endeavor at the beginning, every bit of info I picked up made it seem less impossible and more exciting and interesting. I encourage you to do your own searches. Scroll through Youtube and Instagram for inspiration and how-to videos. Search the blogosphere for route info and personal experiences. Ask questions on social media and forums. It’s a fun part of the journey.

Below you’ll see most of the resources I used. Some of them may be a bit out of date at this point but still inspiring and helpful.  If you find them useful, and have the chance, let them know that Henry / @CityWalks sent you.

Inspiration: 

I actually found this one recently and really liked it. Errant Odyssey is a tour company but they wrote up this great little essay about how beneficial and simple cycling can be. I enjoyed it and really appreciated the sentiment.

https://www.errantodyssey.com/the-transformative-power-of-traveling-by-bicycle

The article where I found the quote I started with: 

https://www.bikeradar.com/features/opinion/markus-stitz-adventure-doesnt-have-to-be-epic

This one’s from 2017 but it will get the juices flowing for sure with 10 things they loved about riding across France: 

Institutional Sites

For the France section of the EV6, two sites provide a ton of basic information and tools. 

Definitely start with the Eurovelo site and dial in to the EV6 info. This site provides maps and information on the entire Eurovelo Network and I get psyched to get on my bike just looking through it. You can search by country or route and find out a ton of the basics here including GPS route downloads.

https://en.eurovelo.com/ev6

A more specific and comprehensive site comes from a public private partnership that created the France Vélo Tourisme website. The English version has more maps too, and you can activate layers to show things like campgrounds, hotels, bike shops, restaurants, sites, public toilets, and just a ton of info. They also have elevation profiles for the various sections, surface type profiles, phone numbers for tourist info agencies and more. Seriously, it has a ton of useful info for all the routes around France. I highly recommend taking a look at this.

https://en.francevelotourisme.com

Videos and Channels

Peter Elmers rode the EV6 in the summer of 2022. His series of videos doesn’t have a lot of detail but I found it inspiring and fun to follow along. He rode in the hot part of the summer so his experience differed considerably from ours which is a nice window into another season.

Roland and Julia are a retired couple out of Colorado who have done several bike tours together in a lot of different places. They did a series of videos from a ride in 2022 that incorporated part of the Loire a Vélo in a westward direction, starting in Nevers. They also have a couple of vids summarizing the ride and one on 5 tips. Here’s a link to their videos from France.

Mark Darby is an Irishman who started his ride in Dijon but quickly joined the Loire a Vélo at Nevers. He does much bigger days than we did but it’s still fun to see the area we biked. 

Daphne Irwin and her partner are Canadians that rode the route to Basel in 2022. She put together a 40 minute video with lots of great information about sites and the route. They went later in the summer and camped.

Blogs, Books, and More

I saw a lot of Ebikes on our tour and I think I could entice TravelingMel on a tour if she rode an e-bike. Here’s a pretty good article about using Ebikes to tour in France

https://www.freewheelingfrance.com/planning-a-trip/electric-bike-touring-in-france.html

Some good tips for packing your bike in a bike box.

https://www.seektravelride.com/using-a-cardboard-bike-box/

Book: Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie by Andrew Sykes. This has nothing to do with the EV6 but I bought it and really enjoyed it. The author is way more fit and braver than I am but it was a good read and helped motivate me to move forward with the planning. He also has several other bike touring books, a website, and a podcast. You can find him at CyclingEurope.org 

https://cyclingeurope.org/apsykes-com/

Trains with Bikes

A great article from France Vélo Tourisme on taking your bike on a train in France:

https://en.francevelotourisme.com/tips-and-advices/bicycle-and-transport/train-with-bicycle

Another from Freewheeling France: https://www.freewheelingfrance.com/planning-a-trip/bikes-and-french-trains.html

11 Helpful tips for Trains with Bikes: https://www.seektravelride.com/tips-traveling-with-a-bike-on-french-trains/

General Cycling Knowledge

In addition to route specific information I like the following sites for info on cycle touring.

bikeforums.net touring forum: https://www.bikeforums.net/touring/

bikepacking.com has some great, mouth watering routes and general info: https://bikepacking.com/

And more:

https://www.adventurecycling.org/

https://www.warmshowers.org

Getting Hurt in Paris and Getting Home

We crossed France ahead of schedule…well, with time to spare. We didn’t really have a schedule, just a departure date. We then spent about a week crossing the country by train and visiting Colmar, Strasbourg, Bayeux and Omaha Beach, and Mont St Michel before returning to Paris. We used our bikes for local transport but the trains to get between towns. We had an amazing time seeing some amazing, bucket-list type sites but I didn’t consider that part of the bike trip so I’m going to leave that for a blog post on Travelingmel.com. For now, assume that we arrived back in Paris on June 2nd with a flight out from CDG on the 5th.

We arrived in Paris on an early Sunday afternoon at Montparnasse, the gateway to the west of France. We had two full days in Paris, Monday and Tuesday, before flying out Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, we couldn’t pick up our bike boxes until Tuesday. I’ve mentioned that I like certainty and I was not completely certain that the bike boxes would there when we showed up on Tuesday at Jour de Vélo to pick them up. This was patently unfair to the shop and I had no reason, other than Murphy’s law to worry, and yet…

We’d ridden our bikes in and across Paris twice now. The second time was when we had to switch stations on our way back out to the coast. So, I was perfectly confident and comfortable riding in the city at this point. Since the train out to the airport left from Gare du Nord, I’d reserved a room at the Hotel Ibis Gare du Nord Château Landon right nearby. We loaded up our bags and hopped on the bikes and set out Northeast to cross the Seine and find the hotel. I also had developed a complete trust of Anders’ navigation skills weeks earlier so I really just followed along behind him. 

I really can’t stress enough how easy and safe we felt riding around the city. It definitely has a hustle and bustle to it but it’s somehow much less aggressive than back home. It’s like all that competitiveness to assert ourselves as individuals ends up reducing our own freedom when it’s expanded to the collective society, a kind a weird iteration of the tragedy of the commons.

So far, other than a sore knee and an ugly bruised thigh in the opening weeks of the trip, we’d pedaled nearly 1000 miles (including Normandy day rides) and been injury free. Even Anders’s scary crash outside of Angers didn’t leave more than a few scrapes. But today, that ended, and not with a car or even riding the bike.

We’d stopped at an intersection to check directions while crossing Paris and decided to walk our bikes across a rather complex and busy intersection using the cross walk, Anders leading the way of course. Large poplars lined the streets, shading the outdoor cafés filled with  people enjoying the afternoon. Loads of cars and busses waited for the light to change. As I walked my bike quickly across the street, about in the middle, the bike tires started to slide out to the side. I think one of the tires must have hit a stray wrapper or something and they lost their grip. In any case, the loaded bikes are top heavy. It’s not a big deal if you are riding and/or keeping the bike vertical but if it starts to lean and the tires have no grip, things get spicy. As I felt the bike slide out from under my grip, I tried to correct while simultaneously worrying about having a bike on the ground when the light changed. I’m still not exactly sure the exact mechanics of the events but in the end, I hit the ground with my back about the same time as the bike landed on my legs. I felt the wind go out of me and a sharp pain in my left mid-back. I don’t think my head hit but I was glad I was wearing my helmet regardless. Six and a half feet is a long way for a noggin to fall before it hits the ground. We’d been pretty good about that the whole trip. 

Aside from the pain, I was embarrassed. I could see concerned café patrons and pedestrians looking over and I think someone may have even opened their car door to help if needed. I was keenly aware of the light changing and my conditioned deference to car traffic had me hustle to get the bike up and out of the street as fast as I could. I was able to walk and got my breath back but that sharp pain in my back was still there and a bit scary. 

I shook it off as a couple Parisians kindly asked if I needed help, which I declined, and we began walking the bikes towards the hotel. I definitely didn’t feel like riding just yet. Mostly though, it scared me. I ran through all the options in my head. I considered finding a French version of an Urgent Care but didn’t think that was likely on a Sunday. I didn’t think I needed to go to an emergency room either. I wasn’t panicking about being uninsured because healthcare in France isn’t that expensive like it is in the US. I also worried about getting the bike boxes and getting everything packed and then to the airport if I ended up with a more serious injury.

After a couple of blocks I felt ok enough to get on the bike and ride slowly, all the while acknowledging the irony of riding so far and only getting hurt while walking. We managed to get to the hotel ok and they said something about charging us to put the bikes in the garage. I was too sore to worry about it at this point but slightly annoyed. In the end, it must have been a mistake or miscommunication because they never followed through with that. 

I popped a couple of ibuprofen and laid down to try to ease the pain and think through the situation. At this point I was starting to think I may have cracked a rib. It was that painful. After a few hours we ventured out on foot to grab some pizza and beer (for me) and then called it a night. I still wanted to find some back up boxes and spent some time online searching around without finding much. Tomorrow was Monday and I hoped I’d have better luck then.

The following day we had breakfast at the hotel. It was fine but nothing special. My back was a bit better but still pretty painful. We got our bikes out and picked a couple of bike shops around the city to check for boxes. Calling would have been so much easier but I had zero confidence I’d be able to communicate over the phone and we only had data plans anyway. It was a beautiful day in Paris. I just wished we could spend it enjoying the city rather than catering to my insecurities. I think we ended up checking two or three shops around town and no one had any boxes. At some point, I just gave up and decided to assume our bird in the hand would work out. On the other hand, we did get to see more of Paris. We rode up to Sacre Couer in the morning and at some point we followed a section of the Canal Saint-Martin.

Riding around Paris is truly glorious, but not when you have a possible broken rib in your back and worries on your mind. Having resigned myself to the will of the bike box gods, I asked Anders if there was anything he’d like to see or do. He chose the Parc de Buttes-Chaumont because it had some interesting features he wanted to check out. I sat on a bench and watched the bikes and the Parisians as the walked by. I found it pretty relaxing, despite my back, to just sit and enjoy the ambiance. 

For lunch we found a charming, bustling bistro and I tried to let go of frustration and enjoy what I could of the rest of the day. Tomorrow we would find out if we could relax or start scrambling.

Jour de Vélo wouldn’t open until 10:00 am which meant we could take our time in the morning, sleep in a bit, and dawdle at breakfast. Of course, my angst ate into that time a bit and made sleeping late impossible. Soon enough, the hour arrived and we ordered a Bolt ride. Bolt is a European version of the ride share services like Uber or Lyft in the US. We like it because it tends to be cheaper and have more cars. However, we couldn’t seem to get anyone to take our request by the hotel so we walked up to Gare du Nord in the hopes that that would make us more enticing. The downside was that the traffic of busses, taxis, and other drivers made it nearly impossible for the driver who finally accepted our request to reach us. All this meant delays and waiting when all I wanted to do was get to the bike shop and know if we had boxes to use or if we’d need to really scramble.

In that regard, I’d made a hotel reservation for this night out by the airport with the idea that if the boxes weren’t there, we’d be close to the airport and hope the Air France desk might have some or help us find some, maybe even find some inbound bike tourers. This also meant that we’d need to check out of our rooms today. I’d gotten a late checkout but we still needed to pack up the bikes.

The Bolt driver finally navigated the crowded car traffic and found us. If we could have come up with a way to ride our bikes there and carry the giant bike boxes back on them, we’d have been there by this time, but bikes aren’t the right tool for every job. Still, it reminded me of how great they are for most urban trips.

We arrived at the shop and walked in to discover our fate. Within about 5 minutes we’d been given two intact and free bike boxes that fit our needs perfectly. I’d read online that you could pay some shops to pack the bikes up for you. With a sore back and not a lot of experience, I did ask if they would do that but was politely told they didn’t offer that service. Nevertheless, I was over the moon and thrilled beyond measure. The staff there had been so helpful and I chastised myself once again for all the stress I’d put myself through. Letting go of it all (well most of it) felt so great.

We still needed to get the boxes back to the bikes though, and they are awkward and large enough that they wouldn’t both fit into a taxi or Bolt. That’s one of the flaws in those services, in my opinion. If you have large boxes or baggage, they don’t have a way to specify that in the app so you don’t end up with a small sedan that can’t fit it all or with not enough room for several people.

In any case, after a month of riding bikes and despite my bruised or worse back, we figured we could walk the 4km back to the hotel. So off we went with each of us carrying one end of each box. It turned into a bit of a slog made more challenging by the sheer size of the boxes and the rising temps but I was so psyched to have the boxes I couldn’t even grumble. And besides, it was a different way to see the city and to see parts most miss completely.

Back at the hotel an hour or so later, we got some beverages to cool off with and headed down to the basement garage to pack up the bikes. We’d stopped at a grocery store and office supply store to get some brushes and cleaning supplies and packing tape for the job. The bikes had acquired a certain accretion of France over the course of the ride. Officials tend to frown with good reason on mud and other agricultural detritus coming across their borders. Invasive species can wreak havoc on local flora and fauna and can cause unbelievable economic damage. Being good citizens, we wanted to avoid that and to avoid any hassles at all on the way home.

So, we set about scrubbing down the bikes as best we could. It took a fair amount of elbow grease since some of the mud proved fairly stubborn, especially in all the nooks and crannies of tires and gears and chains. We eventually got them to a state of good-enough-I’m-over-it and began the disassembling and noodling out how to make them fit in the box stage. We took a few tries to do this and we didn’t get it nearly as neat and tidy as the guys at Dan Bailey’s had done but it was good enough for us. We’d hung on to most of the protective plastic bits that they had used for the trip over and I cut up some card board to replace the bits we’d lost. I won’t cover the packing in detail because you would have a pretty good idea of how things come apart at this point. However, I will remind you to deflate the tires so they don’t burst and to store any loose bits and bobs in a bag somewhere so they don’t rattle out of the hand hold holes. We also used our Voile straps to attach the front tire to the bike frame to minimize rubbing and shifting. I had brought my little baggage scale to make sure we stayed below the 50lb maximum weight.

From here, we lugged the now heavy and awkward boxes up to the lobby and the desk staff kindly called us a taxi van. As you may recall, we’d paid about $130 to get into the city from the airport back at the beginning of May. This trip out, we paid $98. That’s a lot but a sizable difference. Given the time of day, we thought about taking the RER but the hotel by the airport ended up being a decent walk from the closest station. Not a big deal if you don’t have heavy bike boxes, but a hassle if you do. A short while later we arrived at the Holiday Inn Express Charle de Gaul Airport, a modern, glass hotel with a restaurant and bar where we spent the rest of the day. 

The following morning, we got another taxi to the airport. This cost us another ~$50 which was expensive for a ride that is less than a 1/4 mile as the crow flies, but there’s no way we could have walked it with those boxes and the driving route was fairly round about. It would have been almost as far to the RER station. We checked our boxes in at the airline desk without hassle and eventually got on the plane for the long ride home which went without incident. We’d had a wonderful time but we looked forward to getting home to friends and family.

Afterthoughts and Conclusion

I started this whole thing out with a quote: “Not every adventure has to be epic.” by Markus Stitz.  While we ended up riding a long way, our trip falls well short of the Instagram notion of “epic”. I admire and envy the people riding across Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia and get a bit anxious when reading about people who ride all the way around the planet. Those are serious undertakings and hard, physical, daring endeavors. But while our 22 days over an 800 mile long route lined with cafés, hotels, paved bike paths, and chateaus may not rise to those epic heights, doing something new, planning something different, learning new skills, pushing myself just a bit out of my comfort zone (but not too far), and taking on a challenge sure felt kind of epic, or at least like an adventure. I started on the couch, got up, and rode across France. Having done that, I’m pretty sure you can do it too.

I can’t really imagine having taken this trip alone. Having my son along gave me a lot of purpose to motivate me to get things taken care of and kept my spirits up when my schlubby body didn’t really want to keep going or the weather turned wet or that one guy was rude to us (shakes fist in air). We get about 18 summers with our kids and he was 17. Having what I call ‘dead’ time with him was invaluable. I had no agenda of having a deep bonding experience with him. Our only real goal was to make it to the day’s destination in one piece. And yet, at the end of it I felt closer to him as a pending adult than I did at the beginning. We had a lot of banter and casual conversations but also a lot of silence. It’s that kind of time where you are open to anything that actually does create a bond, I think. 

That same kind of openness makes travel transformative as well. Mark Twain famously called travel the death of prejudice. I had some preconceived notions about France and the French before this trip. Nothing terrible, just some stereotypes that I’d picked up from US media and pop culture. What I found was that the French people we encountered, of various ages, colors, religions, and (no doubt) beliefs nearly universally were polite, welcoming, and helpful. When problems arose, they figured out a solution. When we tried to use our French, they indulged us. When we couldn’t find the words in French, they indulged us again. We tend to objectify other cultures, to think of them as somehow having different wants, needs, or fears than “us”. But the reality is the vast majority of us want the same thing and the vast majority of us are kind and even eager to help someone in need. Travel, in between the fancy chateaus and historic city centers with their art museums and cathedrals, helps us see that commonality and shared humanity. This is especially true if you take the time to travel slowly. And a bike is fairly slow. And biking is actually fairly easy.

I learned a ton on this trip, a lot of which was how I could have done it differently, done it better. That’s not a failure, that’s a success. The cycling season in Montana is fairly short and I haven’t motivated to take another long bike tour, …yet. But, I do have the confidence to take one on because I learned so much on the last one. I learned that I really enjoy the feel of pushing myself not to my limits, but a bit out of my comfort zone both physically and emotionally. I learned that I can go farther than I thought and be less comfortable than I thought. I now kind of like feeling a little out of breath after a steep hill and a little tired at the end of a day ride. I definitely like the feeling of having accomplished something.

This is all to say that, even if you consider yourself a couch potato, if you want to ride across France, or anywhere else, you probably can. And you probably should. Give yourself credit. On our trip I was uncomfortable a few times, but never TOO uncomfortable and at the end of each day the tiredness I felt was a good kind of tiredness, like I’d done something. And the things I’d seen and heard and smelled were way better than any binge worthy tv or social media clip and way more fulfilling too.

While I haven’t taken another bike tour over the last year, I have done a lot of day rides, both alone and with others. I can do 10-20 miles in the morning and evening and find myself stopping to look out at the majestic mountains of Southwest Montana or the flowers by the side of the road. I love riding my bike and I think you will too.

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