Day T6: Rolling into Austin

February 10, 2023

Pretty easy day of biking today. The challenges would be coming next in terms of logistics. But before that, it was a nice late start and a roll out of Georgetown southwards.

Tailwinds were really strong as well thanks to another cold front. This was pretty chilled riding, quite literally, and a lot easier than yesterday. The plan was to first hit up Round Rock for, you guessed it, another Orange Theory class.

I never could have found the place without GPS. The series of roads was quite convoluted, and most of it on suburban streets. Eventually I got to the Orange Theory location and it was one of the busiest in Texas. That is saying something when there is the capability to have a full class of 28 people with a waitlist. The coach was on fire today and we worked our tails off.

After that exhausting workout, I was delighted to actually find stuff within walking distance. For the most part, the US is definitely not walkable nor bikeable for that matter. It can be possible to bike from one place to another and certainly do tours like I am, but also frustrating if you just want to chill out and go somewhere close by within a short distance.

Thankfully, there were two amazing stops I could just leave the bike locked to a pole and walk over. The first was real authentic Sichuan cuisine. The staff there all spoke Mandarin and this was real deal Chinese food from the mainland, not that "white Chinese food" that is rather common in western countries, i.e. the food that is changed for a different palate. Also there were no fortune cookies. In fact, I would have to say the quality of this Sichuan food was even better than what you'd get on the mainland and with bigger portions. It was an absolute delight and I could have ordered another one easily.

Then it was hours chilling out at Starbucks because quite simply I didn't want to bike in this scary shit Texas traffic anymore. I suppose you could say I was done with the tour.

But while at Starbucks I got cracking on a ton of logistical errands, not the least of my worries was how I was going to get this folding bike on the next airplane flight without a credit card.

The mission involved two stages. Stage 1 would be a domestic flight from Austin to LA where I would stay one night in a hotel, then take an Uber to Pasadena to retrieve my luggage from the epic bike trip I did before the pandemic. For that trip, refer to here: One For the Books.

The Airbnb hosts had kept my luggage since 2020 and I had gotten in touch with them, therefore a key errand would be to pick up that luggage via a flight stopover. Stage 2 would then be a flight from LA to Vancouver.

Unfortunately, trying to pay for the bike luggage fee without a credit card would be a huge hassle. I called the airline to try and prebook but you guessed it, none of my cards would work. Thankfully my wife helped out with her credit card. Eventually when I get back to Canada I will have two fresh cards waiting for me, and will explain more details on that later.

The next thing involved booking a hotel in LA and I tried various options but it was the usual frustrations. Finally I said enough with this credit card crap, I am just going to use a Chinese app (ctrip) and book a hotel in LA through that while using my wechat pay. It worked like a charm, and I even got a 45% discount at the Hilton right by the airport. For just a little over $100 a night, can't complain about that.

That done, the next task was to try and locate a folding bike bag in Austin. I called several places, and they didn't have them. One even knew exactly what I wanted and said, "The Montague is a tricky animal, it will be hard to find bags for that." I then asked for suggestions and he said why not try Walmart. Then I said, "By any chance can I take the bike in for a tuneup?" He said, "Yes, but it will be a 5-7 day turnaround time." I said, "Really, are you kidding? Just for a simple tuneup?" Either this guy was high on something or bike shops don't do tuneups on the spot. At any rate I was starting to get quite frustrated.

While making call after call trying to sort this stuff out, my wife also called me and said the host of her Airbnb flaked out on her and we won't have a place to stay in Vancouver for the final week. We sorted out the problem together and we ended up booking somewhere else.

All this was turning into quite an exhausting and frustrating day. I'm not sure if this was more difficult than yesterday's biking in the hot sun and headwinds.

Well look at it this way, things may be inconvenient but the weather is great.

The first signs of bike infrastructure all trip

Actual places to sit down and chill. It's outside of course, but still, it's something.

Stopping here to take a photo ended up being a lifesaver. A pickup driver roared his engines SUPER LOUD and blew right past in the far right lane. He no doubt did that on purpose to scare me and he hated bikes, but thankfully I was not moving at the time.

It was a good thing that the turnoff for the Airbnb was coming up fast and I could get off these roads. Dropping off all my stuff, I then had a couple more errands to do. The first was bike to the nearest Walmart and source out the bike bags that I had been referred to.

The problem is that the bags were too small. It was the exact same problem I faced in Vancouver trying to find a bag to get the bike over to Texas. I then did some searching online at Walmart to see if the Austin airport had a shrink wrap service like they did in Vancouver. Nothing was turning up, so I then checked Yelp to see if there were some places in town that could shrink wrap a bike.

There in fact were. The winner seemed to be Pak Mail and so a plan was set in motion for tomorrow

Step 1: Find a place to load up Uber gift card cash, this will be needed for about 4 crucial Uber trips coming up

Step 2: Bike to Pak Mail and shrink wrap the bike.

Step 3: Uber with the shrinkwrapped bike to the last Orange Theory fitness class which happens to be 90 minutes

Step 4: Uber to the airport and check in, thanks to the prepaid luggage

Hopefully this plan will succeed. With that sorted I then made one final stop to 'The Domain' which is basically a famous bar street area in North Austin close to my Airbnb. It didn't really compare to the bar streets in SE Asia, for example Pub Street in Siem Reap Cambodia. Nor did it even come close to Vegas. But whatever, it was something. I had an expensive beer but a beer nonetheless as it is my tradition to finish a cycle tour off with one of those.

Today's ride: 56 km (35 miles)
Total: 1,317 km (818 miles)

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