Pack em Up Head em Out (not so fast)!: The bikes settle down for a short Winters nap

November 21, 2013

You would think that having finished a tour in October, our stuff would still be pretty organized to set off again in January. Not so. Not only did we disassemble and clean the bikes, but we replaced tires, tubes, cables, cassettes, chains, a trigger shifter, and two brake levers. We think this is a kind of normal thing to do, every 5000 km or so. What's more, though looking at the blog photos from 2011, we see that every bit of equipment - that is, every bit, had been swapped out by 2013. So that is not just bike parts, but also clothes. electronic gear, shoes, everything.

This degree of shuffling we think, again, is pretty normal. However, it does create one hell of a mess on the dining room floor! One image of that mess has already appeared, in the page "How Low Can You Go". A new mess, however, grows out of the process of trying to fit the bikes into their hard cases. We have written ourselves endless notes about the right procedure, what bits have to come off and what can stay on, etc., but even if you remember what to do (or manage to understand your own notes), it is still a bug to actually disassemble, wrap and pack, and fit in the stuff. Today, it took us five hours, yes five hours to eventually put the bikes down for their nap in the hard cases. Two year old kids would be easier to handle than this pair of Fridays was!

Meanwhile, a call to shipbikes.com confirms that we will be able to take the hard cases a few blocks to Fedex near the Key West airport , and ship them to where our ride will end. The only problem is, it forces us to decide now just where the ride will end. We are going to call that Tucson, at least for now. If we get to Tucson (and have lots of time and money) to spare, perhaps we will then ship the cases on.

Now that the bags are packed, there is a feeling of ease. We can anticipate Christmas with the family, secure in the knowledge that we are set for departure when January comes. Ooops! One small detail. We don't have a route determined for Key West up to an intersection with the Southern Tier at Gainesville or Tallahassee in north Florida. Also, although we have one set of the ACA Southern Tier maps, we have not devised any maps for Steve (me) as I trail along.

We do have a subscription to alltrails.com, from which we can create and print maps that will be better, we hope, than printing Google maps. Ok, cancel that feeling of ease. We are still on the case!

The bikes are pretty cocky at this point. Pampered by months in the dining room, they dont believe we would jam them into 30 inch suitcases.

Its not easy - the bikes are putting up a valiant struggle.

Ok, they are jammed in there. Note the help line for befuddled luggage goons at the airport.

Cats love this kind of disruption (as long as their own carefully regulated personal lives are untouched).

49.5 pounds! Thats the suitcase, not the well stuffed cyclist.

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