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I've been spoiled by Madison's network of bike paths. My commute to campus involved trundling two blocks through our quiet neighborhood followed by 6 miles spent entirely on well-maintained, dedicated bicycle paths, unless I felt particularly lazy and stopped in at Monona Terrace to use the bicycle elevator to get to the top of the hill. And it wasn't unusual to see someone pedaling heavily through our former neighborhood with a child seat holding a wobbly-headed toddler, then an older child pedaling along on a third-wheel trail-a-bike, followed up by a bike trailer holding either a third child or a mishmash of the attendant stuff that must always accompany expeditions with small kids.

I'd heard good things about Montreal's bike-ability, and on my very first morning in the city noticed a substantial flow of bicycle commuters weaving in and out of the rush hour traffic along our side street. Not just skinny guys in Crédit Agricole and Cofidis racing kits, but men and women in varying degrees of business and casual wear on various types of bikes, cruising serenely by honking cars.

My first bike expedition out, however, was considerably more white-knuckled. Thing is, for a city of its size, Montreal has very, very few dedicated bike paths, and only a handful of roads with bike lanes or even shoulders. So, you're almost always riding with the flow of traffic. The flow of fast, crazy, impatient, traffic. "This isn't so bad!" I first thought to myself as I cruised down my street, following the woman in her mid-40s, dressed in capri pants and a striped shirt, biking ahead of me. "This is totally do-able! Look at me, taking in the urban landscape like a native!" The woman ahead of me went around a car waiting to turn left at the same time that a passing Yaris accelerated to do the same. She slammed on her brakes and started yelling at the driver who cut her off, following him down the street to the next stoplight. "Hey! Hey! Va te faire foutr'!" she shouted, banging on the passenger-side door of the car with her fist until the light turned green. And so it began.

Later, the traffic report on the CBC discreetly referred to an in-town road closure due to an "incident" with a cyclist, who was doored by someone in a parked car, then run over and dragged by a vehicle going the opposite direction. Moreover, what bike lanes there are are overflowing with not only cyclists, but a volatile, vile admixture of cyclists, small children, oblivious pedestrian tourists, mopeds, motorized wheelchairs, rollerbladers, skateboarders, illegally-parked delivery vans, and strollers, and criss-crossed by rapidly-turning cars not checking for oncoming cyclists behind them and city buses (which legally have the right-of-way in traffic).

That said, now that I've acclimatized to the insanity a bit more, I'd rather ride my bike here than I would in some sprawl-y suburb where I'm likely to be run over by somebody who can't parse the concept of "cyclist" and "roadway" in the same sentence. While there are plenty of idiot, aggressive drivers here, I've also been given plenty of space by nearly every vehicle who passes me, and I've even -- while waiting at a red light next to the curb, with a car waiting to turn right directly on my left -- had drivers look back at me and wait for me to clear the intersection, instead of risking cutting me off. Furthermore, I'm in good company. Everyone -- young, old, men, women, students, seniors, tourists, enthusiasts -- cycles here. And, when it comes to getting a feel for the city, I've learned far, far more about it during the leisurely outings I've made during the past few weeks than I ever would have just by walking, the Metro, and the bus. (Sometimes, confusing bike-path organization helps with this, too.)

Things that I have seen and places that I have been and things that I have discovered so far, thanks to my bike:

• The Old Port
• Innumerable snack-bars, yarn stores, creameries, and bike shops (where I should probably stop for a cheery bell plus spare tube and travel pump. Mmm, and some nice panniers would be good, too...)
• Lots of city parks, including ones I can't find on maps
• Some kind of Hare Krishna fun fair
• That on a warm summer's day, the air surrounding the pool in Laurier Park smells like strawberry popsicles.
• The backs of old warehouses coated with graffiti along the CPR tracks
• Lines of laundry neatly hung out to dry along the backs of houses in Villeray
• Locks and old factories along the Lachine canal
• Habitat 67
• The tower of the Olympic stadium hanging ominously over everything within a half-mile radius, like some kind of alien mothership
• Ile Notre-Dame, after an accidental crossing of the St. Lawrence
• Random parts of downtown, setting up for Just for Laughs
• Almost the top of Mont Royal. After feeling my heart and lungs trying to escape my chest cavity and draping myself limply over the handlebars, I conceded that if it is hard enough for Eddy Merckx, it is definitely too hard for me.
• Random mimes
• Some guy playing with devil sticks in Lafontaine. I know, right -- how long has it been since you've seen those?

Once I start knowing my rotes a little better, I'll even begin to bring my camera. At the moment, though, traffic and constantly being pleasantly lost are enough to keep me occupied.

Sounds like you're having a good time! And keeping trim while you're at it. :)

A bicycle elevator in the midwest seems like a cruel joke, given the hill I climb every day on the way home:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Anne,_Seattle,_Washington

And yeah, about two miles of my commute is on the city streets (the rest being on the awesome Burke-Gilman trail, and people here seem to be quite good about giving me plenty of space. :)

I should also mention that the biking enthusiasm is well-timed, since I'm too cheap to get a Y membership yet and I've been doing tons of baking due to my extra spare time.