Two wheelin' in Paris and London

When I moved to Paris in 1999 one of my first purchases was a bicycle. I had noticed a bicycle shop on Boulevard St. Michel near the Luxembourg gardens. Point Velo specializes in Dutch bikes and is run by two soft-mannered Sri Lankan men. I bought a forest green bicycle of the Maxwell brand. If you’ve never ridden a Dutch bicycle, at first it’s quite an adjustment. You feel very tall and regal and slightly ridiculous. Then you become addicted to the comfort of sitting up so straight, with this sturdy, decidedly un-racing-like contraption under you. It’s the perfect city bike.
Now I ride my Maxwell in London. It is much more dangerous than cycling in Paris. In Paris people drive in a consistently aggressive manner but at least you know what to expect and generally, drivers are alert and on the lookout. In London drivers are passive-aggressive. Although they will stop for pedestrians on a crosswalk, they will thunder murderously past cyclists, so close you can feel the fabric of a loose jacket touching the side of their vehicle. Cars will shoot across a lane at the last minute. Could it be in part because everyone here is from somewhere else and somewhere else they all drive on the other side of the road? The city is also incredibly Byzantine and un-organized compared to Paris—part of its charm too, but from a driver’s point of view, they could have used another Haussmann. Nevertheless Londoners do bike, perhaps more than Parisians; here are some wonky statistics: 40,000 Parisians out of 2.5 million say they use their bikes regularly. (What does regularly mean?) In London, according to a 2004 travel report, 26 million journeys a day are made in London, including people commuting. Of these, 300,000 are made by bicycle. Sounds like a lot to me….
Maybe one just notices London bikers more—they wear helmets with flashing lights on them, they wear fluorescent yellow jackets and fluorescent bands around their ankles. In a city where people are generally nicer to each other than in Paris, there isn’t much camaraderie among London bikers because they’re too busy concentrating on not getting hit by a bus. In Paris there’s a newfound camaraderie around the Velib bicycle rental points because figuring out the rental system isn’t easy at first.
When I moved to London initially I had a good thing going for bicycle repairs. My neighbors had put me on to Larry, a retiree who had become a bike doctor. He would sail over on his bike that same day, drink copious amounts of milky earl grey tea, and for a small fee repair flat tires—mainly from rose thorns and broken glass strewn outside the pubs that hadn’t yet been swept up in the morning, but also other minor bike problems. Sometimes, though, he’d go for a long time without answering messages, and then re-surface weeks later. I finally realized what everyone else knew—he regularly went on drinking binges. Now it’s been four months since I left a message and the other day we crossed paths on our bicycles at an intersection. He waved at me and gestured to show he would call promptly. I’m still waiting for him to do some work on my brakes...