Nice, Day 4

Day 4 in Nice.  Bonjour.  Sitting in a cafe on the Riviera writing.  Now that’s an unexpected marker of success - being a poor English writing undergraduate from Pitt back in 1993 to writing from a position of leisure in the leisure capital of the world.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a staple of any free-thinker with a liberal education.  Among many takeaways from the book, a single one I recall easily is his instructions to his students - he was a professor out west somewhere - to get past the overwhelming nature of trying to capture everything with your writing - which many times leaves you at a loss to where to begin or end - and instead start with something small.  His example was a building - don’t begin by trying to capture the hundreds of details that make up any particular building you may be studying but instead concentrate on a single brick and work outwards, slowly.  It’s important quality as I begin to construct my memoirs. 

I come across that thought in my memory bank as I organize my thoughts from this trip - thoughts that span food, thai massage, beaches, the Riviera, French small business, lack of American franchises like Starbucks and Dunkin, personal debt, Fitzgerald/Antibes, trump news 4000 miles away, smoking, family, updated Malibu thoughts, small Riviera towns and thoughts, the embarrassing count of massages and treatments and shaves and haircuts I’ve gotten here, and what I will cover here this morning, - from a coffee house from south Nice - electronic bicycles and the short term rental scheme of Lime.   I know, it’s an active mind.

The coffee house is a little outside, a little south, of the tourist district on Rue de France.  It’s the weekend now so we are experiencing a quickening of the pulse of the Riviera.  We arrived on a Tuesday, and now it’s Saturday.  Ports are full of yachts, reservations are a must, and traffic has picked up.  Currently, 7 men past 40 and mostly past 50 are drinking beer, coffee and shooting the shit.  I guess this is café society.  It’s lively, and most people here seem like they frequent the place and are well-acquainted with each other.  It’s an intimacy America lacks by every measure, especially for middle aged+ men, who are most vulnerable in the US for lack of the emotional support from any angle that sustains mental health.  Empathic loud comfortable conversation with no obligations with fellow men - it’s rare in America outside of church. It’s why American men are so lonely, and have such mental health and related quality of life related issues - it’s just a lonely existence of obligations in all directions.

If you can’t beat them join them, so I just got a beer for 3 euros.  It’s 11:45.  A.M.  My nephew rolled in around 4am, so I haven’t seen or heard much of him yet today.  Here in this coffee shop there is a sense of home I feel even though I can’t understand a word anyone is saying.  There’s not a rush, not a hurry.  They are here to socialize. Day drinking in Nice.  

(Just heard from my nephew by text who rolled in from a Nice party Friday around 4am - can’t wait to hear the stories).

I’m a bicyclist.  Own I think 3 nice bikes - mountain bike, road bike, and now a gravel bike (made for non-paved rail trails).  Probably around $12k in 2 wheel transport.  Light, fast, durable.  But I had never ridden an electric bike and looked at them with disdain for the ease of effort they demand (I was guessing since I never had ridden one).  But here in Nice, the Lime bikes are all around.  No docking like the citibanks of NYC - no app needed.  Linked directly to your Uber account under ‘2 Wheels’.  So I hop on one of these, after being told several times the electric boost is just a helping aide going up a hill, but fuck no - you push on that pedal for the first time and off you go at a speed you’d be hard pressed to maintain even as a moderate rider.  The bike literally takes off when you press the pedal - sure you push the pedal, but you are only doing the act of peddling, the motion - the electric does the rest. Is it pedaling or peddling? To lazy to check.

These French lime bikes have these handy bells built into to each handle bar for easy alert, and a basket in from to store your carry-ons while riding.  Once we got the fever, we really came down with it, and now we plan our days - not just our days, but our next vacation - around knowing the convenience these bikes offer.  You can cover some ground, and anyone who rides bikes knows, life is different on a bike - the views, the action, the perspective.

(The man in the wheelchair drinking a beer was just rolled outside over the non-handicapped 8” entry ledge so he could enjoy a smoke.)

Don’t get me wrong - none of this is replacing the arduous nature of a 30 mile road bike ride in the Catskills or the 15 mile mountain bike ride along the Delaware River on the McDade trail, but there is a time and place for these machines.  They literally are like a moped.  I guess in some ways, that’s where the differences begin - at least on the electric machine, it’s not like a hybrid car where you are using gas or using electric.  On these machines, you are always on electric, and the act of riding without it is futile and fruitless as the bikes really aren’t made to ride without the assist, so contrary to what I thought - that you get a boost when you need it on an incline - the electric bike is a constant assist - you literally don’t break a sweat.  I’m sure there is some exercise involved in the constant pedalling but as for increased heartrate and beneficial exertion, there is nearly zero.

(The buzz of the conversation is constant, though the characters keep changing.  It’s noon.)

That doesn’t change the fact that there is certainly a place for these bikes in my life, especially if you live in a small town or city (say St Petes) where getting short distances (say under 5 miles) is common.  The ease of transport, and quality of transport is amazing and more helpful than a moped in terms of getting un-motorized lift to your destination.

So, you take a picture of the scan code, get a reading of the mileage left on the bike, and off you go.  When you finish, you ‘finish your ride’ by parking in the right location and with a push of the button wallah, you are done.

We did learn a few things - in fact, half our plans or more on this trip were met with unexpected zig zags along the  completion journey.  One of our first important lessons, and this involved some sub-lessons as well, is that these bikes operate in ‘zones of operation’ meaning you can’t just go anywhere - sure, obvious in retrospect but what isn’t.  So when we concocted this great plan to take our enthusiasm for electronic biking to the next level, we devised a plan to ride from Nice to Antibes, a ride of maybe 15 miles, which isn’t much on a regular bike but is still a bit of an adventure for the average person.  

Turns out, the zone of operation ends where Nice ends and that’s about 10 miles outside of Nice and 5 miles short of Antibes.  And this is where the mechanical nature of the electronic bike comes clear - once the electric power gets cut - which is what happens when you pass the edge of the zone of operation, these big cumbersome bikes turn into a crossfit Assault bike where the harder you pedal, the more the bike resists - it literally is not meant to be ridden without the electric assist, which was completely unknown to me.

So we scratch our heads, thinking the electric charge was low, finally figured out it was in fact a zone of operation issue, and had to limp back a few miles into the zone of operation so we could find an allowable place to leave our bikes.  And then Ubered to cap d’antibes to lunch at Le Rother, literally within the shadows of where Scott and Zelda wrote, drank and disintegrated as his early rise gave way to an early denouement of a shooting star - but that’s a different topic for a different day, as detailed in paragraph 2.

(Just ordered beer 3 - they are smaller so it’s not as bad as it seems - but now the bartender/barista is keeping an eye on me as he spots a serious professional who needs his refills.  The Cafe has mostly emptied, it’s 12:30, and just a table or two of talking and some laughs). 

Just this morning, I found a bike and cruised up to Castel beach club where we had reservations for the day which I canceled since I have no idea when my nephew will be waking and the winds were whipping off the ocean at 20mph, and then cruised over the Port of Nice, over into North Nice and back again on the Promenade des anglais.  The beach club goers in 20 mph ocean winds reminds of the beach goers in Miami when it’s cold and overcast - just sort of sad, or the skiers who insist on skiing bald mountains in March.  

Turned out to be a nice sunny breezy day in Nice at the beginning of the 'the season'.