Canberra to Brisbane and back by taxi, plane, hire-car and folding bikes

We have owned Bike Fridays for quite a few years now.

One of the reasons for buying them is yet-to-be-defined, retirement activities which will include short cycle tours in and around cycle-friendly cities.

We intend to fly, train or bus between cities in Australia and in other countries. We have already used the bikes a lot for local riding and day trips. I've done a couple of loaded tours with mine. These tours are journalled on CGOAB. We are very happy with the ride quality of the bikes, and pleased with their general suitability as tourers and commuters. What we had not done until recently was flown with the bikes in a tour situation.

At the time of this journal we were mid-50's and experienced cycle tourers and commuter cyclists. We live in Canberra Australia.

I am reasonably competent at basic bike mechanics having graduated from the school of the self taught with "Richard's Bicycle Book" class of '75.  I mention this because I think it is helpful, though not essential, to have a few clues about general bike components and maintenance before launching into the Bike Friday system. It is a brilliant design concept and works wonderfully but it is not simple nor foolproof.

Folding bikes, and particularly Bike Fridays, are said to reduce the angst and time of packing, transporting and unpacking touring bikes. We know from experience that air travel with standard diamond frame touring bikes can be testing.

The Bike Friday system is designed to make it less testing. Their bikes are made to be pulled apart, folded and packed fairly easily into a large, rigid suitcase.

We recently had an opportunity to give our Bike Fridays a flight-travel try-out as part of a short holiday from our home in Canberra to Brisbane to see friends. As well as seeing our friends, the Brisbane visit gave us a chance to see some of the city by bike and to trial the combination of plane travel with our folding bikes. The trial also gave us an opportunity to assess and to learn how suitable the bikes are to take further afield with air travel.

We had a few questions in mind before the trip. For example,

• How easy would the bikes be to pack and unpack? And how long would it take?
• Would luggage weight be a cost problem with the airline Qantas)?
• Could the Bike Fridays be combined easily with taxi and/or small hire car?
• How compatible are the Bike Fridays with inner city hotel accommodation?

First a few stats and facts for readers not familiar with the context. From Canberra to Brisbane is approximately a 1200km drive one-way (13hrs). It is a 1hr 50min direct flight between the cities. Canberra airport is about 7km from our house. Brisbane airport is about 18km from Brisbane city centre. Brisbane is a fast growing state capital with a good reputation for its cycling infrastructure.

The journey which we fitted our folding bikes into was a taxi ride from home to Canberra airport, a flight to Brisbane, a small hire car (Nissan Micra) drive to South Brisbane, travel within Brisbane, hire car drive back to Brisbane airport, flight to Canberra airport, and Canberra airport to home by taxi.

This trip was completed over three days and three nights.

We cycled on two of the three days and cycled most of the central Brisbane area.

Our Bike Fridays are custom-built New World Tourist models. For the flight, I packed the bikes into wheeled, hard-suit-cases (Samsonite) which we bought with the bikes. Unlike many Bike Friday owners, we don't convert these cases to trailers for touring purposes. Instead we use folding racks and panniers. As this trip was very much a hotel-based, credit card tour, we only took one pannier each. I also had a handlebar bag.

The first-time dismantle and careful packing of both bikes into the cases took about 90 minutes. It was not difficult but I did refer to the instruction book quite a few times.

There is a separate page in this article with a summary of the general steps in the packing and packing. There are also a few photos of the pack and unpack elsewhere in the article. Bike Friday supplied an excellent instruction manual and a DVD with the bikes.

It took me about 50 minutes to reassemble both bikes. The second disassembly and pack of the two bikes took about 60 minutes. I am confident these times would continue to decrease with practice.

The total packed weight of the bikes was 45kg total according to the airport scales. Our (two passengers) checked-in luggage weight allowance on the Qantas domestic flights was 46kg with two pieces of checked luggage, and two carry-on pieces. The weight of our checked luggage included the bikes, the cases, cables, locks, racks, tools, spare tubes, lights and some of our clothing. It did not include our panniers, helmets, camera, iPad, and a few other bits and pieces which we put in our carry on luggage.

The carry on luggage was not weighed but it was well under 7 kg per piece. I used a pannier as carry on. My wife used a small, wheeled suitcase case.

All our luggage fitted easily into a station wagon type taxi.

Everything fitted surprisingly comfortably into a tiny Nissan Micra hire car. The luggage was also very easy to move about the airports, and to/from the hotel room without using trolleys.

The following pages of this article have photos of the pack and unpack, photos of moving the packed bikes, a written summary of the pack process and photos of the Brisbane ride.