Second of an occasional series

Antarctica may be the only continent where you won’t find people routinely getting around by bicycle. Get your exercise on, travel at your own pace, and get an up-close-and-personal feel for wherever you choose to go.

The tourists on the tour bus? They have no idea.

A lot of Americans don’t view bicycles as serious transportation, but ours is not the majority view in the world. Cycling has a lot going for it, as we noted at the start of this series.

The folks at Virgin Vacations keep a list of what they consider the 11 most bike-friendly cities in the world, places where getting around can definitely be part of the fun of travel.

Seven of those cities are in Europe — Amsterdam, Copenhagen, the Norwegian cities of Sandnes and Trondheim, Berlin, Barcelona and Basel.

When you see how much gasoline costs in Europe, more than $6 a gallon in some places, you’ll know why you see so many bikes.

BIKES RULE, CARS FUEL
Having been to Amsterdam and Berlin, I’m a witness. Bikes rule the roads in both those European capitals. Both have mile after mile of dedicated bike lanes off-limits to cars, and if you’re crossing one as a pedestrian, you’d better be serious about looking both ways.

In bike lanes, cyclists have the right-of-way — and they are zealous, if not downright militant — about it. Throughout much of Europe, you’re as likely to be run over by a bike as by a car.

Call me crazy, but I think that’s a good thing.

Amsterdam is literally awash in bikes. You’ll find them parked in front of every hotel, restaurant and shop, locked and chained to every handrail and lamppost.

Across the street from the city’s Centraal Station railroad terminal is a three-story parking lot exclusively for bikes. Depending on whom you ask, it holds 7,000 to 10,000 of them, and the Dutch are building room for more.

Berliners take pride in the fact that less than half of them own a car. Where bikes in Amsterdam are almost always matte-black single-geared cruisers with flat handlebars and built like tanks, Berlin bikes range from ultra-technical mountain rides to a folding bike you can literally fit in a broom closet.

RENT-A-BIKE, PARIS STYLE
Paris isn’t on that bike-friendly list…yet. But they have one of the most successful citywide bike rental programs — and the largest in the world — called Velib. Pick up your rental bike at Point A, drop it off at Point B.

Parisians can subscribe to the Velib program; visitors can use a credit card (although the machines prefer EMV cards, a plastic card with its information stored on an embedded chip rather than our outdated — and highly vulnerable &mdsh; magnetic stripe). Rental is in euros. In US dollars, the rates work out to $1.50 a day, $6.50 a week or $40 a year.

The bikes themselves are French-made, Hungarian-built 3-speed models, robust-looking things that look as if they should be leading a presidential motorcade rather than nimbly threading through traffic, but they’re custom-made for getting around a mostly flat city with you and your belongings.

Major cities around the world have come to Paris to check out the Velib program, with an eye toward replicating it back home. One of those — to the surprise of probably no one — is San Francisco.

Not every mega-city is conducive to cycling. Places like London, Tokyo and Mexico City instantly come to mind as examples of cities where a cycle tourist might be taking his life in his hands. Even Paris, where the Velib program was instituted in part to make the City of Light more bike-friendly, can have its issues.

But get outside those car-choked urban centers and out into the countryside, taking in smaller cities and towns along the way, and everything changes. For the better.

In the French countryside, the towpath that run alongside old barge canals make ideal bike paths. There are even canal cruises that bring bikes on board for passengers to use during the day.

BYO BIKE?
Bike travel gives you a lot of options, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. You can rent a bicycle locally or BYOB — bring your own bike — with you. You can go on your own (though riding with one or more friends is always better), or hook up with a bike tour company that will provide you everything you need, except perhaps fresh legs.

Aside from the money you save on a rental, BYOB has the added advantage of putting you in unfamiliar territory on a familiar machine. There’s something comforting about doing your exploring on a bike you know well. In the end, though, it can be more of a hassle than it’s worth.

Bringing your bike with your on a flight of any length can be not only expensive, but harrowing. If you think baggage handlers are rough on your luggage, you don’t even want to know the kinds of abuses they can wreak on your precious wheels.

By the time you get it back, it may look as if it was in a mixed martial arts cage match…and lost. American Airlines once shipped my Univega touring bike from San Diego to New York in a large plastic bag.

Use your imagination.

ALL-INCLUSIVE BIKE TOURS
Nowadays, you can buy travel cases that will protect your machine from all but the most reptilian of baggage handlers, but the case may cost as much as or more than the bike itself. Even then, you will have to partly disassemble it just to fit in inside the case.

And few of these cases are designed to be comfortably maneuvered by one person as he schleps his other bags out to the taxi stand.

There are touring companies which, for fees which admittedly are not cheap, will provide your bike, helmet, maps, guide, and knowledgeable bilingual ride leader. Lodging and meals, included. You may pay a lot, but you get a lot.

In future installments, I’ll give you the names of some of those outfits.

For now, close your eyes and picture yourself cruising through the French countryside, a bottle of water in one bike rack, a baguette and a bottle of wine in the other.

Remember I told you that seven of the Virgin Vacations bike-friendly cities were in Europe? Well, the other four are right here in the States.

We’ll look at that next.

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