Packing the Bike Fridays

September 3, 2022

On the road and in the airport

A tour for which you can just load up and pedal from home is really a packing dream. Things start to get complicated when you have to get on a plane, where the bikes need special arrangements to fly, and where you have to divide your stuff into carry on and checked baggage. Checked baggage is now very costly, but also electronics, medications, and things you really do not want getting lost or damaged need to come as carry on. If you add to the mix (as we are this time) an "open jaw" tour, that begins in one overseas place and ends in another, and if you throw in over 15 pounds in 12 special batteries (as we are), it gets a bit crazy.

We started out just setting up the Bike Fridays as they would be while on the road, touring. It turned out that we needed the "classical" full complement of rear and front panniers (four panniers per bike), even though we are not camping. A big reason is that we need to carry all sorts of bags in the bags! There are giant plastic bags that house the bikes when they go on the plane, there is a set of bubble wrap sleeves to house the batteries when they go on the plane, and there is a bag to hold the sleeves of batteries. There are giant Walmart bags, that we find convenient for carrying all the other bags up to hotel rooms, and there are smaller Walmart bags to hold the panniers that come on the plane as carry ons. Finally there is a giant duffel that serves as a checked bag.

This flagrant array of bags and bags is in contrast to our actual gear, which has now been refined down to quite a bare minimum. Except for this - our open jaw tour also happens in a shoulder season (jaws and shoulders, lots of anatomy in touring!). That means we need two or three seasons of clothing, including some quite warm and heavy stuff.

One other reason for all the panniers is the need to balance the loads front and rear. We started out in our thinking with just two rear bags on Dodie's bike. But this caused a lot of skittering up front, so we decided to put some bags up there to weight it down. Some of our Ortlieb bags are tied up in Leipzig or in a mail-back box still in transit, but these are all large bags, so maybe they would not help our balancing project. This spawned a last minute run into the city to find an extra pair of small bags. Ortlieb is too expensive to use as a weight, but we found some semi-decent bags at Mountain Equipment Corporation (MEC).

Usually this would be a place for me to put in a photo of the MEC store, and to burble about how going to MEC is part of the fun of touring. But since the "betrayal", in which the Mountain Equipment Coop became a Corporation, things have not been the same between us and them. So sorry, MEC, no photo, but we did buy your panniers!

Dodie's bike looking rather weighed down at the back.

Steve's bike with good balance. After this photo we swapped in large bags from Dodie's bike's rear. Steve then has the more traditional large on the rear and small in front look, while Dodie has small, front and rear.

Loading and balancing the bikes is a bit of a daunting task, and with so many panniers (eight plus two handlebar plus one trunk bag plus two battery bags, equals at least thirteen locations) it can be a chore to remember where certain stuff is stored. We addressed this by writing down where everything is. Now we have to remember where we stashed the list!

But things get more complicated again when we imagine pedaling in to the airport and asking ourselves what we have to pull out and repack into carry on and checked baggage. Here is a version of our list, in which orange things are carry on and blue ones will be checked! (It's not the details here that we are trying to show, just what a mess the whole topic is.)

Don't lose this sheet! (Blue checked, orange carry on).

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Patrick O'HaraAh. I was wondering which bikes you were going to use since your other ones are currently in Europe. Is this the maiden voyage for the E-Bike Fridays?
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2 years ago

Keith ClassenWow - that’s a lot of organizing! Ever consider a cruise? One bag….done!!!
Just checked in at the airport … went very well. Looking forward to following along with you two. Safe riding!
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2 years ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Patrick O'HaraThe Fridays are necessary when we are locked out of Schengen, or want to start a tour in Western Europe. Too much time to go pick up the Leipzig bikes, take a train to Spain for example, ride and then take a train back to Leipzig to stash the bikes again. We have already done a quick tour in Mexico (in the Yucatan, until Dodie crashed and broke her shoulder) so this is a second try at touring with the eFridays.
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2 years ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Keith ClassenWe are not boat people-actually Dodie especially hates the enforced inactivity (and being on the water-seasick) of a boat journey. No, it is bikes for us. OCD kicks in in terms of organization but we do seem to manage it.
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2 years ago

Keith ClassenTo Steve Miller/GrampiesWe have enjoyed cruises but I agree bike touring is way more fun!
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2 years ago

Sue PriceYou two are so organized!!! We always start out like that and within a few days have messed it up entirely, then by the end we have it all down to a fine science. So sad about MEC 😥
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2 years ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Sue PriceSince Dodie is the more "organized" (some would say obsessive) she is the one in charge of what goes where and how to find it. At first even she has to look things up on the master list, but within 2 weeks or less she can lay her hands on almost everything, almost without looking, and even Steve has figured out where the stuff he regularly uses is located.
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2 years ago

Keith AdamsAfter a month of lugging the dratted things around I came to loathe my CPAP batteries but would have hated the poor sleep I get without them even more. I can't imagine what 12 batteries would have been like, even though they aren't all the size and weight of the ones I was carrying.
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2 years ago

Keith AdamsDid you have your Fridays retrofitted for e-Assist? That may be something that causes me to reconsider selling mine. I will ride my Rodriguez (once it's built and delivered) as long as I can, but at some point it'll become untenable.
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2 years ago