Weird #3: BIke Shops & Bike Lanes

With as many people as ride bikes around here, you'd think it would be easy to find a bike shop right? It isn't that they don't exist, but they are all these little tiny hole in the wall places. A bunch of bikes jammed into too small a space and a very oily repair shop all run by one guy. There is supposedly a bigger shop on the south side of Espoo, the town where I am living, but I haven't made it down there yet. Will do after the girls head back, I need to have my headset tightened and need to find some more maps of the area with bike info on them.

The big difference between biking here and at home is that bikes here are treated as pedestrians where at home they are treated as vehicles. This means that nearly every sidewalk is split with one side marked for bicycles and the other for pedestrians. But you also end up with many of the problems of riding on the sidewalks at home... peds in your lane, difficult paving jumps at each driveway or street crossing, generally slower travel. You can get out into the street sometimes, but it is clear the cars don't like it much. I haven't been out into the countryside much yet, but the roads I've seen are narrow and have little shoulders. On the other hand, there is very little sense of road rage here. Drivers seem to respect each other and the bikes. People are much less stressed out somehow.