A Skating Sunday?

There is a group in Paris called Rollers & Coquillages ("Rollers and Shells") that leads Rollerblading trips through Paris. Every few Sundays, some Parisian streets are closed, and you can skate on the wide boulevards with the benefit of a police escort. On some summer Sundays, there are 10,000 people skating through Paris.

I’m not a great skater, but the Rollers & Coquillages logo is a snail on skates (seems like a fish on a bicycle, no?), and the Website said that beginners are welcome. How bad could it be? I decided to go with some friends from school. (Thanks to Owen for discovering this!)

Alas, when we got there, we discovered the trip was cancelled. It was rainy and wet, very slippery and dangerous, especially for beginners, they said. But, if we really wanted, they would still rent us Rollerblades so we could skate through the wet, slippery streets of Paris on our own, without a police escort.

Do they think we’re nuts? We’re MBAs. We’ve been trained to conduct detailed scenario analyses and risk assessments. We can tell you the potential downside to any decision. So we decide, naturally, to go for it.

I don’t think it was a bad decision. Johnson is a hockey player and excellent skater, and he was patient enough to lead us. We skated a few blocks to the Seine, where we picked up a bike path along the river. After a couple of hours, we were all cold, wet, and tired. But we still had all our limbs, so we decided it might be a good time to call it quits and head to a bistro for some hot chocolate.

Seriously, though, it’s not that dangerous. The sidewalks and bike paths are wide and smooth, and we had safety equipment on. (After all, we MBAs learn risk mitigation strategies, too.) We’re all looking forward to doing the Paris skate tour when the weather is better, especially now that we’ve had some practice!