À 19 ou 20 ans (je ne sais plus où est mon permis). J’ai dû conduire en tout moins de 250 km, uniquement sous la contrainte parentale et la dernière fois il y a 30 ans. Ah non, quelques années plus tard pour faire 10 km de plus, parce que mon chauffeur était plus bourré que moi, le temps de trouver la première route pour quitter la nationale ; les choses étant bien faites en France, elle menait à un bistrot de campagne.

I used to switch to mountain biking in winter. Less speed (much less for me, I am not very good on a road bike, but boy I suck on a mountain bike 😛), more effort: you’re warmer. 🥵

Last winter I used a ‘smart’ indoor trainer. Well, two ‘smart’ trainers. The first one lasted 2 weeks, then they sent me another one, it lasted about 2 months or so before starting to make so much noise I couldn’t use it anymore. I never managed to fix the piece of crap. Well, the pieces of crap since I have two unusable specimen.

This year I have zero motivation and haven’t touched a bike in over 2 months…

The parachute was covering the top of the balloon. It remained in position once the balloon deflated, and allowed to fall gently. There were several demonstrations, I think; people were crazy about ballons back then and experimented a lot of things.

Here is one one of the accounts in French, published in Le Républicain’s edition from Aug 12, 1894 :