Jumper

Third Eye Blind was one of my favorite guilty pleasures. Then I went to Paris.

Nick and I went up for a weekend in February just before Linda moved from a program in the center of the city to snooty HEC on the Paris fringes. Nick and I bought weekend tourist passes. They came with discounts on the bateaux mouches and to a slightly unappealing Italian chain in the city. Not very impressive. Linda had just bought a week pass as she wasn't serving out the month.

Our tiny paper tickets worked for the very first metro ride on the 1 and for our second which took us to the Jardins de Luxembourg. After that, they simply refused to read at the next station. Paris is switching over to a system more like the Oyster card in London or the MetroCard in DC, but in truly French fashion, this means they have given up hope on the magnetic paper ticket readers far too early. They make no repairs. The manned ticket window is a real rarity.

So. We jumped every metro gate save three or four that weekend. In the older metro station, this really meant vaulting over the bars. In the newer ones with full length doors, it took hopping through the exits. All of this became all the more interesting after I sprained my ankle Friday night and spent the rest of the weekend making Keri Strug-type efforts.

After this moved from the frustrating to the farcical, it was actually mostly fun. Parisians would egg us on, or try to sneak us thru on their working cards. And we got all the benefit of participating in a time-honored tradition, without any of the illegality. After all, the only thing you need to be on the Metro is a valid ticket. And a knack for sticking your landings.