It's a real luxury when we are able to travel without having bikes, or even much luggage, in tow. But in certain circumstances we get saddled with even more than the usual burden (literally) on our backs. We felt pretty clever when retrofitting the Fridays to e-assist, and using the LiGo batteries from GRIN Technologies in Vancouver. These batteries, each just under 100 wH, can be taken on board planes, assuming they are in carry-on. Ok great, but we have 12 of them! That means that not only do we get to convince airport authorities each time that they are ok, but we get to carry them in backpacks onto the planes. That's fine, but then we also have the bikes. 

Most cycle tourists seem to find and transport giant bike boxes, storing them at the destination or finding more when needed, to return home. Even if we were not so poor at finding the right boxes, we typically need to leave from Vancouver, to avoid getting totally bankrupted by air fares from Victoria. So that means getting onto a ferry, off the ferry and onto a bus, and off the bus and onto the Skytrain. It's not possible to do that with a bike box. Even if we could move boxes about, perhaps using some kind of wheel arrangement such as was pioneered by Brent Irvine, there is certainly no room on the bus, or the train, for that.

Fortunately, Bike Friday thought of this, and the bikes can fold into standard suitcases (assuming you pull off a lot of accessories, like luggage racks and derailleur guards, phone mounts, maybe e-assist controllers, etc.) The suitcases have wheels, so with batteries on our backs, we're movin'! But wait, what about the panniers we will need on the trip, the giant Nikon camera, bike helmets, swim clothes, sleep clothes, sun clothes, computers, tablets, chargers of all sorts, and etc.?

This is where Dodie comes into her own, both remembering all the needed stuff, and then packing it into suitcases or such, all the while keeping under the airline's restrictive size and weight limits. 

Typically, she describes her progress with what is going where in frequent progress reports for me. I am poor at packing, and may not fully follow the reports, but one of the things I do understand is having only one back and two hands for carrying stuff. That kind of adds up to three items. So I am keen to keep a tally, when processing a  luggage report.

The shot below shows me doing this. And the fingers actually do represent the categories so carefully singled out for special charges by Flair Airlines: Checked bag, carry-on bag, personal item, bicycle. With Flair, you can have these all, in what they call their "Big Bundle". It more than doubles the price of the air fare, but we kind of expect that. No, the expression of the guy in the photo comes because he can do basic math: 4 items minus 2 arms plus back equals "oh, oh".

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Patrick O'HaraDidn't know you were a lute player.
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1 month ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Patrick O'HaraThe instrument in the picture is actually a balalaika. We got it at the Russian pavilion of Expo 67. Never learned to really play it. It is the Russian national instrument, and you can also see it featured in the film "Dr. Zhivago". A broader photo would have also revealed a mandolin, a violin, and two dulcimers. One of the dulcimers came from a trip through Gatlinburg, Tennessee - in the Bluegrass home of these instruments. Not that we ever really learned to play, though I was once in a mandolin orchestra.
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1 month ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Steve Miller/Grampiesp.s. The cuckoo clock also barely visible came from cycling near the Black Forest, from Triberg. It plays two tunes - Edelweiss and The Happy Wanderer.
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1 month ago

Karen PoretTo Steve Miller/GrampiesWow! Three “golden oldies” 😂
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1 month ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesWith this clock, while the music plays, dancers spin under where the cuckoo lives, and an old woman threatens beer drinkers with a rolling pin. The shop in Triberg is called Haus der 1000 Uhren, and 1000 is probably an underestimate of the number of clocks they have.
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1 month ago

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These considerations about the number and weight of luggage pieces are well known to all cycle tourists not fortunate enough to just cycle from their front doors. We were talking about this in a meetup with the famous Classens, and Kathleen showed that knew exactly what we were talking about:

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