I Traded My American Car for a French Bicycle

The word embouteillage rolls off the tongue elegantly like silk lingerie caressing smooth skin, but its translation, ‘traffic jam’ hits like sweat inducing itchy flannel. The mere thought of being trapped in a car tracking the movements of everyone around me, cursing short-timed green lights, and endlessly readjusting my posture in search of comfort makes my chest tighten. I haven’t turned an ignition, tapped a blinker, or parallel parked in a year, and life has been better for it.

From the age of 15 to 42, I was a driver. Stick-shift to automatic, compact car to large diesel truck, even tractor to golf cart, my right foot became an expert at getting me wherever I needed to go. My left foot, on the other hand, mostly loitered on the floorboard, burning a few clutches, stomping the occasional emergency brake, but otherwise unemployed. This unbalanced workload ended the day I moved to France.

Two weeks before boarding a flight to Bordeaux, I handed my car keys to a dealer in Chicago and it was one of the most freeing experiences of my life. No more endless gas-to-brake shuffle, inching through hour-long commutes that barely carried me five miles.

Goodbye to oil change waiting rooms, accidental tow fees from the no-parking-today sign slapped on my usual free spot, inflated rent to cover the parking space outside my apartment, and that damn registration sticker I always forgot to renew. I was saying farewell to the lifelong steel dependency I thought I couldn’t leave home without.

Everywhere I lived in the U.S., having a car wasn’t optional, it was essential. My childhood suburb of North Carolina had no citywide sidewalks, no bike lanes, no buses, and no stores within easy walking distance from my house. Getting to school, catching a movie, visiting the dentist, even picking up groceries, all of it required a ride in a gasoline filled carriage. My baby blue bicycle rarely ventured beyond the confines of my driveway and the safe two-block radius around it.

I attended university in a larger city, with a campus surrounded by walkable coffee shops, pizza hangouts, and bookstores. Grocery stores were beyond a short distance, the student bus only circled campus, and city buses never stopped at the goat farm where my professor was lecturing on the importance of balanced nutrition for ruminants. As an Animal Science major, who often attended classes miles away on farms or at veterinary hospitals, a vehicle was still required. Student convenience, it turns out, wasn’t convenient for everything.

I spent years in the Appalachian Mountains, piloting 36-foot trailers loaded with cattle up winding mountain roads to summer pastures, and hauling pampered jumping horses from New York to Florida—long before podcasts made those hours bearable. Local radio shows or a well-worn CD kept me semi-sane, printed directions saved me from the narrowest backroads, and I spent half the drive awkwardly wrangling a water bottle behind my back to ease the aches from a right foot that never got to rest.

In Music City working as a food photographer and stylist, my SUV was basically a mobile circus, light stands, food toolkits, half-baked turkeys, and backup cakes for TV competitions jammed into every inch. I navigated the four-leaf-clover-on-acid road system, paid $38 for an hour of parking just to eat spicy chicken, and tried not to stare when I got stuck behind a flat-top bus full of dancing cowboys at two in the afternoon. Bike lanes? Those gravel-glass-trash-strewn, gamble-with-your-life, sporadic excuses for bike lanes were no place for my little e-bike, which valiantly carried me the half mile to Kroger and back for baking supplies.

Now, thanks to a beautiful port city in the south of France, I’ve become a pedestrian, bike commuter, and occasional purchaser of billets de bus. Here, the city bus is used by everyone, from kids on their way to school to women in stilettos dodging cobblestones in the rain. The tram, slower but smoother than Chicago’s L train (goodbye, motion sickness!) glides you around town effortlessly. Bicycles rule the streets here: they outnumber cars, enjoy VIP parking, dedicated lanes, and transport residents safely, no matter the weather. The difference is jarring: what used to feel like a battlefield now feels like a carefully choreographed dance.

Instead of stopping to fill a gas tank before succumbing to gridlock, I check the air pressure in my bike tires before heading to the boulangerie for bread. I merge into the pack of cyclists streaming down the street toward jobs, schools, or errands, fully immersed in their French, bike-friendly rhythm.

My mid-life sports car is a café-noisette–colored bicycle with a wicker basket big enough for my purse, a rotisserie chicken, and a couple baguettes—complete with a leather seat, leather handles, a bell, and lights. I’ve grown in my finesse of pedaling in sneakers to small heels, from pants to skirts, all while gliding through parks and light traffic finally with even pressure on both feet. However, there is often the challenge of the occasionally wind-meets-skirt, which I’ve remedied by tying it to the side with a hair scrunchie.

I pass sprawling clusters of velos outside local schools, a stark contrast to the car heavy parking lots and drop off lines I remember back home. Here, teenagers happily ride three deep on single seat bikes of varying shine to rust, parents tow wagons filled with toddlers, men pedal in suits all moving through the streets at any hour of the day.

When the rain pours, bike wagons are sheathed in plastic, cyclists slip into raincoats and affix un parapluie (umbrella) to their handlebars, carrying on unfazed. Families pedal home after dusk in reflective vests with flashing lights, while cold winter days call for scarves and wool hats. E-bikes and Vespas weave into the mix—and though I’m a little enamored with one particular green Vespa, for now I’ll take the woman-powered gears of a bike to counteract my love affair with French pastry.

Grocery stores, bakeries, butchers, flower shops, hospitals, schools, veterinarians, gyms, and parks are all within walking distance. The American model of sprawling lots and private driveways, set far from daily activity, feels almost unimaginable in a place where everything you need is just a few minutes from your door.

Life feels a little sweeter, a little more carefree on two wheels than trapped inside a box of four, and for once everything feels in balance. Riding home from a movie in the dark, under streetlights, beside my husband, I exclaimed, ‘It’s like we’re in a movie!’ Some familiar ’80s storyline played in my head, I felt like a kid again, yet somehow, this is all completely new for me.

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