November 17, 2024
Day 53: Fukuoka scavenger hunt
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We're grateful to have had a place to crash last night that didn't break the bank. What we're less fond about is the five hours of limbo between checkout at place number 1 and checkin at place number 2. While this was our last move before Tuesday's trip to the airport, my brain still switched on the WKRP theme song, because I'm 🎵 kind of tired of packing and unpacking 🎵.
This last place is perhaps the most comfortable of all the lodgings we've experienced on this trip. For a variety of reasons, we've stayed away from apartment rentals on this tour. The major factor has been the lack of planned off days. What's the point of emptying the contents of your shaving kit if have to throw everything back in the next morning? Best to keep it on an as-needed basis.
Our idea today was to hit up a bunch of bike shops to see where bike boxes were available, and to pick the best and/or closest one for later retrieval. That didn't exactly go as planned. We must've tried a dozen places. One shop had two very small bike boxes at 600 yen each. Everyone else was either uncooperative or apologetic.
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We were pretty wiped out and demoralized after being turned down so many times. I proposed that we stop for coffee and a snack. In my desperation, I tried some Google searches that I'm sure I'd already made before the trip even started. Before long, I found that there's a wrapping and boxing service in Fukuoka Airport. It sounded too good to be true. My wife called them, and sure enough, they said they could box our bikes for a reasonable fee. We did this at Incheon two years ago, and it worked out wonderfully. So I guess we scrambled around town for nothing. We did effectively kill a few hours, and we got a little more familiar with the city's layout, for what it's worth.
We still had about thirty minutes before checkin at place number 2, so we decided to try one more bike shop as a potential backup plan in case the boxing service idea doesn't work out. This large operation did have a box, and it was big, but they only had the one. We told them thanks but no thanks. We also went to a home improvement store to see what they might have. They did have boxes, but nothing that we could easily convert into a bike box.
Now we are committed to riding our fully-loaded bikes to the airport (yay, no taxi hassles!), working details out with the boxing service, dismantling our bikes wherever the airport staff allow us to do so, then letting box guy or gal work their magic. We have our airline's maximum box dimensions handy, so our plan is to do minimal breakdown of the bikes and go with big boxes if possible.
On Tuesday, we have to check out by 10am. Our flight doesn't leave until 6:30pm, so we have plenty of time to pull the trigger on either of our backup plans if things don't work out at the airport. That's the other thing: the airport is right here in the city. We won't be stuck in the boonies if things go haywire. Because of this, we're considering paying a personal visit to the boxing service tomorrow. Is that being too paranoid?
Today's ride: 23 km (14 miles)
Total: 2,993 km (1,859 miles)
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