No, Schlepp is not a brand of ginger ale. It is a word now in English slang that derives from Yiddish and in turn Low-Middle German. It generally means to haul or carry (something heavy or awkward). We also see this in Germany, where a car tow away zone will threaten that "Ihr Auto wird abgeschleppt".

Schlepping stuff around is generally a bug, but when the stuff is a bike or bike gear, on a plane, it can also be quite costly, assuming you even found a box to dump the things in.

The alternative is to store the bikes and stuff in place. As you can see from the previous page, this strategy can lead you into a lot of costly duplication. And then there is storage. There are several examples on Cycleblaze of people finding friends, friendly people, or helpful businesses, that will hold onto bikes, bike boxes, or bike suitcases for short and long periods of time. And Cycleblaze also tells of people, like the Andersons, who have shipped their bike cases across country, sometimes with good and sometimes with disastrous results.  In most blogs, though, this matter of bikes on planes, and getting and storing boxes, is rather glossed over -no problem.

That's a mystery to us, because this is an area (second only to how to get to and from the airport from our remote house) that gives us lots of heartburn. This is helped a lot by our friends Jurgen and Birgit in Leipzig, who graciously have held onto our stuff for many a year. But we have no Jurgen and Birgit in France, Spain, Portugal, Mexico and similar god-forsaken destinations! 

Taking courage from Anne and Steve Maher-Weary, who we think have stored their bikes variously in Lisbon, Barcelona, and Toulouse, we have found storage in the past in Valencia, Spain and Playa del Carmen, Mexico. The cost in Valencia was €53 per month, and the cost in Playa was Mxn 1200. Over a period of months, these are amounts that will add up, but also they will not totally sink the financial ship. This also has to be looked at in comparison to how much airlines are charging for checked bags and for carrying bikes.

How much is that, actually? We can tell you. On Flair, flying from Vancouver to Cancun, they want $111 for a checked bag and a carry on, and $83 for a bike. So that's $200 per person per direction, or $800 for us each having a bike and some gear. Without the bikes and gear, we can just waltz on board with our "personal items", for "free".  That was our incentive for looking to stash bikes and gear in Cancun. A Google search did turn up a few self storage places, and we wrote to them. Early returns were disappointing. The first place quoted Mxn 25,000 per year. That's $2000, making Flair look like a charity.  But one popped up for under $700. Oh happy day! That leaves us money to buy one (or more) spare handlebar bags and helmets!

The only trick to this, is that the space at that price is 1 meter by 2 meters by 1.5 meters high. This is where the Bike Fridays come into their own. That is lots of space for them, plus panniers and those handlebar bags and helmets. People with "real" bikes might have to think twice about the deal. The next size up at our spot - Vive Storage - was maybe twice the size and twice the price.

There was a lot of Whatsapping back and forth with Vive Storage, as we tried to be sure there would be a spot for us in the storage building when we got there. At first they said no problem, but later they came back asking for payment in advance. We probably would have said ok fine, but they wanted it by "bank transfer", something that involves quoting things like SWIFT numbers, and the Mexican equivalent, the 18 digit CLABE.  And then there was the RFC. RFC?: 

RFC stands for Registro Federal de Contribuyentes, which translates to Federal Taxpayers Registry. It is a unique tax identification number issued by Mexico’s tax authority, the SAT (Servicio de Administración Tributaria). 

All this gave us cold feet, so we are back to them saying ok, show up and we'll arrange it.  Since we supposedly arrive in Cancun close to New Year's Eve, there is not much time to fix things if they go wrong. Fingers crossed.