Only the Washing Up!

How do you buy your bikes? Go into a shop, point out the one you like and say: “I’ll have that one, please”? Not me!

Ask a friend if you can buy one off him? Well, sort of ‘yes’ but also ‘no’.

I’ll stop talking about how you might get one and I’ll start telling you about how I got one.

We were staying with our friends Christophe, Susanna and Ava at Christophe’s dad Joachim’s house. Joachim invited some friends round for dinner. One of them was Daniele, but everyone called him ‘Papa-Nous’, which is French for ‘Our father’.

Somehow he managed to fit in “I have 160 bikes” into the conversation. My bike is too small for me now and I was looking for a new bike, not a mountain bike or a BMX but a dropped handlebar road bike like the ones in Le Tour.

We knew it would be hard to get one but Papa-Nous came to the rescue. He invited us to see his bikes the next day, so we went to his beautiful house in the middle of the countryside and looked in his barns at all the old bikes.

He would find them, or buy them cheaply from flea markets, do them up then sell them. He had loads everywhere!

We asked him if he had any kids’ bikes. He thought I wanted a BMX, but I said I wanted a road bike and he said he knew where to get one. He had leant one to a friend who lived nearby.

He jumped in his car to fetch the bike, brought it home, cleaned it off and took me on a test ride through the lanes. It was 30 years old!

How did it feel? Well, I was just about to tell you. Because it has dropped handlebars I can go more aerodynamic (faster because the wind doesn’t buffet you) so it felt like I was really racing. It was great because that’s just what I wanted.

I hope you enjoy the pictures and this blog., and a big thank you to Papa-Nous. My new bike cost the massive amount of . . .  €0 (although Mum and Dad bought him a bottle of wine to say thanks)!

Billy

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