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I’m Jeff Scott. I’m a retired, award winning Architect, originally from the sunny SW coast of Florida, I live in Nice France now. Yes! I’m a lucky guy!
A graduate of Kent State University, in Ohio, I spent close to 40 years designing the world around us, both residential and commercial projects. At age 70, I said “enough” my wife, An and I and our little dog, Bella, sold, donated and gave away most of our stuff and retired to the south of France. That was back in early 2024.
Since we’ve moved here, life has been an adjustment, mostly good. But there have been some frustrating moments.
I’ve had to get creative and resourceful in order to make our lives, here in Nice, France, as comfortable as possible. Sometimes, that means coming up with creative ideas for finding storage, repurposing things, recycling things and having an eye for good trash out on the streets. You know what they say— “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. And today, in this video, my favorite phrase is “every centimeter counts”!
Please subscribe to my channel and be sure to share it with your friends and family who have dreams or goals to move to France…or maybe they are already here.
The music used on my channel comes from Epidemic Sound. Here’s the music used for this video-
Backwards Walk by Stationery Sign
[Music] Hi, this is Jeff and Nice. And next to us are two guys taking off on their bicycles, on their line bikes. And what today’s talk is about is riding line bikes here in Nice. So, come on along, look at the YouTube video, and we’ll show you what you need to know. So, one of the rental bike companies that you can just jump on a bike with your phone app is Lime Bike. It has a battery on it, so it’s battery assisted. has a light and a basket on the front and you can just sign up, join this little club and you can take these bikes anywhere you want to go. And here we are near the mall and what we’ve got here is a number of bikes in the bike parking area. So that a number of people have ridden them here to the mall. Then you park the bike and you put it on your phone that you’ve returned it. Um, and then go on your way. You don’t have to worry about it. [Music] So, I’m here today to show you the electric bikes that are available in Nice. There’s two styles of it. One is called a pony bike. Now, the pony bike has a driver’s place up front and a passenger sits on the back. And when your passenger sits on the back like this, there’s pegs and little handlebars to hold on to. And when you’re driving around, two of you can ride on it at the same time. So that’s called the pony bike. This is an app that you have to download in order to get the pony bike app. The other bicycle that’s available is called a lime bicycle. and a lime bicycle is a single bike. Now, in order to rent the bike, you have to open the app on your phone. And when that app opens up, what you do is you scan the QR code and that will unlock the bike. Right now, the bike is locked like the brakes are on, so you can’t go anywhere. So, here I go. Bike app. I click on it. My Pony Bike app says scan and ride. So, I’m going to press the scan and ride. And I’m going to [Music] Okay. So, first I’m going to scan the code. And then after I scan the code, I have to enter the vehicle ID. Now, there’s a little number down here that looks like on this one, it’s going to be H DQ dash [Music] A DQ. Done. Allow pony bikes to connect. Allow allow. It’s unlocking and it looks like it’s working on getting us the bo the bike ready to go. Now, the nice part about these bikes are you pedal, but it’s also has a battery assist. Connection issue. The pony seems to have a connection issue. Get closer to the pony. QR code. [Music] Then I’m going to enter the H DQ dash A T. Done. Connection issue. Is your Wi-Fi turned on? I have no idea. The code again. It says as connection gets closer and try and scan the code. The problem persists. Please contact customer service. Okay. So, I’m going to cancel this one. I’m going to try another bike somewhere else. Let’s see where else there’s a bike. Lift the kickstand to start. putting the kickstand down while parking. Right now the bike is okay, adjusting the seat, getting movement, being pedaling to start the electric motor. Wear a helmet when riding. Test the brakes. Ride in bike lanes. with the rules and regulations and done. All right, here I go. My first ride of an electric bike. My lime bike. My electric way to get around town. This is going to be so fascinating. I’m telling you. I’m going to try it in like a little back alley first. I think this one’s going to work best for me. And I’m off. So, as you start to pedal, that’s when the battery assist kicks in. And then I’m going to use the brakes. It’s got hand brakes. So, I’m going to start to pedal again. And then you just one little pedal and it zips along. So, as you start to go on the line bike, as you pedal, it kicks in. There’s no twist throttle with it. Just pedaling is how it makes it go. You pedal lightly. You have to use the handbrekes to stop, [Music] but it’s very easy to ride. It’s got a basket in the front. And I think this is a cool way to get around town. And that is how to ride. Now, at the end of your ride, you bring it back to a parking spot, and you’ll see the parking spots on the map. And what you do is on your app, you’ll see that there’s a end ride. So, you’ll see here you’ll see end ride and you’ll see where you parked it. You click end ride. End the ride. Yes. And then you take a place if take a photo of where you parked it. That’s sort of proof that it came back. [Music] And there we go. That was my ride for today. You saved a $169 on this ride with your lime pass. I have 57 minutes of ride time left. I bought a package for the ride rather than just ride by a dollar to unlock it and then so many cents a minute. So, how was my ride? I would say it was, look at that. My ride was six, five stars. Yes. And there we go. Thanks for your feedback and riding with Lime. We did it. We did our first electric bike. So, the trick is it doesn’t twist grip like a motorcycle does. What you have to do is you start pedaling and as you pedal the electric kicks in automatically and then you just use your hand brakes to stop. So it’s a great way to get around town. It’s electric, non-polluting, has a basket on the front and if you need to get somewhere quickly, these little bicycles are available at all the popular spots like down at the prominade and a number of places through town. When you go to ride the bikes, you’ll actually look on your map with the app and it’ll show you where available bikes are at. [Music] So, I’m going to open that app. First video that opens up is it shows where you’re at. It shows you where all the available Lime bikes are for rent. We’re right here. It looks like there’s six different bicycles available for rent, but there’s all over the city are line bikes. Also gives you a red mark where you should not ride. You should not be driving on the tram tracks or on certain parts and parts of streets. So for that, line bikes are the way to go. I think you should all give it a try when you’re here. [Music] [Music] Let’s go. [Music] Oh my god. [Music] the pony bike. Now, a pony bike’s a two-seater, and the guy that’s with them was riding on the back. So, they’re going to do the same thing. They’re going to park the bike, put it on the kickstand, and then you take a photo. you say end ride and then he’s all through with their travel across town. So pony bikes take two people, line bikes take one person. So a lot of times when you need to go someplace across town, line bikes are the good way to go. They have a basket in the front. You can adjust the seat to whatever height you need. You can throw what you got at the store in the basket in the front and scroll down and just take it where you’re going. [Music] And located in the city at strategic points are bicycle repair spots where the tools and the items that you need to repair your bike are permanently attached to cables and can be pulled out as needed to work on your bicycle. along with a tire pump and hose to fill up your tires. And so you can see that they’ve gone a long way towards making the city of Nice a very bike friendly environment. There’s also a little holder on the side to insert your tire to support your bicycle while you’re doing repairs. And right adjacent to that is a public water fountain. Um they encourage you to have a water bottle with you to cut down on waste. And with one turn on the top, the water begins to flow and you can refill your water bottles or give your dog a drink on a hot day. So as you look at from a bike approach with the bike lane, the sidewalk and the narrowed one-way traffic, they have redesigned Nice to be very bike friendly. Well, thank you for watching and I hope you enjoy your bike rides. Give us a thumbs up if you like this video and subscribe and we’ll bring you more information. If you need anything, give us comments about what you’re looking for and we’ll check out Nice and give you more info about what’s going on in town. Bye for now. [Music]
2 Comments
Wow, Jeff now a YTer! Love it!
I have wondered how those bikes work. Thanks for the demonstration!