I just spent a week in Paris on vacay with the missus. While I will spare you the full travel log (sights seen, the food, the douchebag French who work for Air France who decided to strike and stranded us for an extra day in an airport hotel...) but since this is a bike forum, I'd share a little about the bike environment in a major city like Paris.
The experience, from a riders perspective, was WOW. I knew that bikes and scooters were a preferred method of transport, but seeing it in action is a whole other animal. Bikes and scooters everywhere, and not the lame little Vespas, everyone is on those maxi-scooters now. We may scoff at them here, but they have some serious go and totally fit in around a city like Paris.
Bikes there seem to be all about function, and not nearly about fashion is they are here. Face it, everyone here gets litre bikes because they don't want to look like a pussy, and most can't ride them anyways. Then we all gussy our bikes up to make them look great (I'm among the most guilty, not making any accusations here.)
There, everyone does seem to slap on an Akrapovic exhaust, but beyond that, it's about function over form in city living. Everybody had luggagae hanging off their rides, and as it was crazy cold, had fixed hand gaitors and fixed lap covers for their bottom halves. Bikes were dinged up, scratched, hadn't seen a bath in ages. They were transport, getting from here to there.
And the array of bikes and bikes styles was staggering. Ducati Monsters and Hypermotards, BMWs everywhere. Hondas, a few Kawis, and tons of brands I've never even heard of. And lots and lots of Yammys. I saw exactly one FZ6R (or something similar enough to it), but lots and lots of FZ6s.
Very few, if any true sports bikes. I think I maybe saw one R6 or similar bike. Everything was more upright oriented...I mean EVERYTHING. Their mentality clearly was, if I gotta get around on this thing every day, I want to be comfy.
I also saw 3 Harley's. 2 Sportsters and one Road King!! The RK looked enormous compared to everything else, it was kind of awesome to see it there. It was also perfect clean every day (it was parked outside our hotel, and moved every morning.) What else would you expect?
The bikes ranged in size from lots of 125cc bikes (which still looked way cool BTW, especially the Yamaha R125s I saw) to big big BMW all terrain monsters and everything in between. And like I said, just tons of them. Bikes everywhere.
Driving skill and driving conditions? Sorry folks, but we don't hold a candle to these folks here in the USA. Say what you will about their laws requiring you to start off at small displacement engines and work up to get your license, versus our insistence on freedom, but their system works. I still fall on the side of individual freedom, but you can't deny their system yields better riders. They are all zipping along on cobblestone paved roads, in heavy traffic, with lunatic car drivers. They are safely splitting traffic, flying around roundabouts, and navigating very cramped streets with minimal distances between them and other riders or card drivers. I never once saw anything close to approaching an accident with a rider. One time in my whole trip I saw a rider honk his horn ONE TIME because a car started to change lanes into him, and it was resolved instantly and safely.
Did I mention the extreme cold front in Europe right now? It was below freezing the entire trip. Next to last day we were there, it snowed. Not a ton of snow, but enough to make the roads snowy and ice everywhere. Traffic was down considerably that morning across the board, but did it stop all the riders? Hell no, there they were, zipping around on all manner of bikes and scooters. All of them riding the same way, with their feet out and hovering just above the road ready to catch themselves. Clearly it was something they'd been taught, and safe or not, they rode around with complete confidence. I didn't see one shaky rider out there. Pretty cool.
All in all, it was awesome to see. I've been to Europe several times, but this was my first trip after taking up riding so I was like a kid in a candy store watching everything this time. Thought I'd share.
The experience, from a riders perspective, was WOW. I knew that bikes and scooters were a preferred method of transport, but seeing it in action is a whole other animal. Bikes and scooters everywhere, and not the lame little Vespas, everyone is on those maxi-scooters now. We may scoff at them here, but they have some serious go and totally fit in around a city like Paris.
Bikes there seem to be all about function, and not nearly about fashion is they are here. Face it, everyone here gets litre bikes because they don't want to look like a pussy, and most can't ride them anyways. Then we all gussy our bikes up to make them look great (I'm among the most guilty, not making any accusations here.)
There, everyone does seem to slap on an Akrapovic exhaust, but beyond that, it's about function over form in city living. Everybody had luggagae hanging off their rides, and as it was crazy cold, had fixed hand gaitors and fixed lap covers for their bottom halves. Bikes were dinged up, scratched, hadn't seen a bath in ages. They were transport, getting from here to there.
And the array of bikes and bikes styles was staggering. Ducati Monsters and Hypermotards, BMWs everywhere. Hondas, a few Kawis, and tons of brands I've never even heard of. And lots and lots of Yammys. I saw exactly one FZ6R (or something similar enough to it), but lots and lots of FZ6s.
Very few, if any true sports bikes. I think I maybe saw one R6 or similar bike. Everything was more upright oriented...I mean EVERYTHING. Their mentality clearly was, if I gotta get around on this thing every day, I want to be comfy.
I also saw 3 Harley's. 2 Sportsters and one Road King!! The RK looked enormous compared to everything else, it was kind of awesome to see it there. It was also perfect clean every day (it was parked outside our hotel, and moved every morning.) What else would you expect?
The bikes ranged in size from lots of 125cc bikes (which still looked way cool BTW, especially the Yamaha R125s I saw) to big big BMW all terrain monsters and everything in between. And like I said, just tons of them. Bikes everywhere.
Driving skill and driving conditions? Sorry folks, but we don't hold a candle to these folks here in the USA. Say what you will about their laws requiring you to start off at small displacement engines and work up to get your license, versus our insistence on freedom, but their system works. I still fall on the side of individual freedom, but you can't deny their system yields better riders. They are all zipping along on cobblestone paved roads, in heavy traffic, with lunatic car drivers. They are safely splitting traffic, flying around roundabouts, and navigating very cramped streets with minimal distances between them and other riders or card drivers. I never once saw anything close to approaching an accident with a rider. One time in my whole trip I saw a rider honk his horn ONE TIME because a car started to change lanes into him, and it was resolved instantly and safely.
Did I mention the extreme cold front in Europe right now? It was below freezing the entire trip. Next to last day we were there, it snowed. Not a ton of snow, but enough to make the roads snowy and ice everywhere. Traffic was down considerably that morning across the board, but did it stop all the riders? Hell no, there they were, zipping around on all manner of bikes and scooters. All of them riding the same way, with their feet out and hovering just above the road ready to catch themselves. Clearly it was something they'd been taught, and safe or not, they rode around with complete confidence. I didn't see one shaky rider out there. Pretty cool.
All in all, it was awesome to see. I've been to Europe several times, but this was my first trip after taking up riding so I was like a kid in a candy store watching everything this time. Thought I'd share.