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Outside Magazine's 2002 Family Travel Guide

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Joie de Bike
A city kid takes off the training wheels on a pedal-happy French isle
By James Traub


	Illustration by Nik Wheeler

LEARNING HOW TO RIDE a bicycle is not normally a big deal in this great suburban land of ours. But in Manhattan, where I live, children have no motive to learn, since the bicycle has no practical value unless you make a living as a messenger. And so my son, Alex, reached the age of nine with only the haziest sense of how to maneuver on two wheels. Then, abruptly, we lowered the boom. "Alex," my wife said one day, "Next summer, we're going to an island in France, and the only way to get around there is by bicycle. You're going to have to learn how to ride a bike." To which Alex said, "I'll do the best I can"—family code for "Don't blame me if I fail."

Alex is the kind of child who stands in left field with his mitt on his head, talking to the kid in center; his coach once said, "Alex, I know you're going to be a great lawyer someday, but we've got to work on the athletics in the meanwhile." Bicycling did not come naturally to him. We farmed him out to a cycle-happy dad. No dice. We trained on the roadways of Central Park. Alex cycled, and I ran behind to prevent catastrophe. I think the low point came when I accidentally sent him south on a northbound bicycle circuit, and as he gathered speed downhill a phalanx of cyclists came charging straight at him. Alex's idea of braking at that time consisted of putting his feet down. When I uncovered my eyes, Alex was sprawled next to his bike. I think his first words were, "Thanks, Dad."

Well, we didn't cancel the trip, and one July afternoon we walked down to the little bicycle rental shop in Les Portes-en-Ré, a trim and quiet hamlet at the nether end of Île de Ré, an island halfway down France's Atlantic coast. Alex picked out an old black three-speed with the little thumb-operated silver bell mounted on the handlebars. We parents got bigger versions of the same. We practiced for an hour or so in a nearby parking lot, where Alex could work on his moves without humiliating himself—a fate that is, from the nine-year-old's point of view, infinitely worse than death. The auguries were not good. Every time I said, "Alex, use your brakes," he shouted, "I am!" as he toppled over onto the pavement. We half-rode, half-walked, back through town, while French six-year-olds went tearing by with infuriating aplomb.

Les Portes is a dollhouse-size town. Little white houses with green shutters line narrow, winding streets that converge on the main square. Now we slowly wheeled along them on our way home to lick our wounds. Alex loved the miniature house we had rented on a shaded lane filled with hollyhocks. He had a bunk bed—the top for himself and his animals, the bottom for his Game Boy, his CD player, his tennis racket, and his dirty clothes. A spiral staircase snaked up to a sunny kitchen with a dining table and cushion-covered love seats. That afternoon, Sophie cycled over. The English-speaking daughter of a French friend, Sophie was also nine, and had been instructed by her mother to serve as Alex's interlocutor with the world. The two of them camped out on the love seats, their heads almost touching, while Alex read the latest Harry Potter, and Sophie, early Harry. Alex absentmindedly fed himself from a bowl of the local strawberries. Here was the bliss of an indoor child. "This," he announced with the flourish of a Barrymore, "is living."

But he couldn't escape the bicycle. Alex took a daily group tennis lesson, with Sophie acting as his translator. The courts were a few hundred yards away—the perfect biking opportunity. That next morning, he wheeled his bike out of the alleyway, got up, fell down, got up, stayed up, and wobbled on down the road to the court. Each day Alex became less unsteady, but he still viewed the bicycle more as an instrument of torture than as a means of transportation.

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