Me and Rustbucket

Well I think I am really starting to go turn into a Euro.

First of all, I am now speaking french 2 full days each week in the office. That might not sound like a lot, but it is and it's exhausting! It's quite easy to "bavarder" (chat) in French but it gets a bit more difficult to try and explain things and understand things work related that people are telling you. But I have to say it is good practice which I really need. Thursdays it is just with the 2 girls in my office and on Fridays, some brilliant lad that I work with started "French Fridays" where all the English speakers have to speak French. This is actually quite humorous to speak French with other Americans and Brits and Russians and South Africans and other people who don't normally speak french. Anyway it's a "bonne initiative" although today for example, I got so fed up with a situation that I switched to English for the remainder of the day to make it easier for me (and bought a chocolate, also to make it easier).

Second and more notably, I bought a bike last weekend. There is a secondhand bike shop in town and in my opinion, they just go around Geneva, steal bikes and resell them. That or pull them out of the lake because they are all a bit shabby looking. But they work. I got a silver one and put a basket on it and voila! I'm ready to ride around town. I fully intended to name it "the silver bullet," but it doesn't sound quite right for its personality. And like I said, it's a bit from hunger. So, I have christened my bike Rustbucket.

Geneva is actually an awesome city for biking because there are true bike paths everywhere to make it really easy and safe to get around by bike. In fact at some cross walks they even have separate "bike lights" that you cross when that is flashing. Not to mention the fact that you can ride around the lake and check out the French Alps every day of the week. And when you ride in the other direction, you can see other mountains. Yes, just one of the small bonuses about living in Switzerland. Anyway my adventure this week was to take my bike to work! Fortunately, my office is kind of away from town. Well, let me rephrase that. It is nowhere near town. It could actually be closer to France than town. But that means that I can walk through neighborhoods and stuff (and not like the gross pigeon filled sidewalk under the Quincy L stop for example) to get there which is nice. It is also right by the airport which is super convenient for traveling and even BETTER for when you have conference calls and can look out the window at all the planes. Anyway, currently I take the tram about 6-8 minutes and walk about 15 minutes to get to work. On Wednesday morning, I woke up with a slight hangover and pleasantly surprised to see it had stopped raining for seriously, the first time in a month. So I quickly got dressed, grabbed some work clothes, and hopped on Rustbucket.

The only unfortunate thing about the ride to work is it is up a long, gradual incline. Not exactly what you want to be doing first thing in the morning. But that is just the first half or so and the rest is not to bad. It takes me now about 15 minutes door to door which is awesome. Then I go upstairs to work and quickly turn on my crappy laptop, which takes about 10 minutes to boot up, run down to the fitness, get naked, say "bonjour!" to all the other naked ladies, shower up, more naked bonjours, get dressed and run back up to work and voila! In about the same time as it took me to get to work previously, I have gotten a bit of exercise and showered. Cool!

Going home is of course super fun because it's all downhill. In fact it's a little fast for little Rustbucket, and we have to apply the brakes gently so as not to crash into a bush. But two days in a row now, Rustbucket and I went to and from work. And I took my bicycle to French lessons tonight.

All that's missing now is a beret.