Living in terror

On Wednesday evening we took our stagiaire, Hannah, who has been camping in my office since January, to her forever home not far from the boulevards. It's a journey by car of about 12 minutes, but we needed to do it at rush hour so it took about 30 minutes to get there and about 45 coming back. 

On the way we were overtaken on an uphill stretch by a pastor friend on his one-speed bike. 

Going was easy but slow and good for learning patience. Basically we spent the majority of the journey in a traffic jam, and the rest looking out for bicycles.

Coming back was a NIGHTMARE. We let the Citiz car's GPS guide us, but the GPS in the car had not been updated to reflect Bordeaux' ever more complex of one way streets and bus lanes. Such it was that we were rarely able to follow the GPS directions without deviating wildly, and at one point we found ourselves heading down a bus lane for about 250 meters with no obvious way of escape. Vigilance is always essential as bicycles come from all directions, including straight for you the wrong way down narrow one-way streets (usually completely legally).

When we got back to the point where we park the pool car we vowed NOT to buy a car. But now I'm living in terror of getting a PV (procès verbal = traffic violation) for driving down the bus lane.

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