Rethinking Bike Friday Packing

February 5, 2023

A big claim to fame for Bike Friday has been that they can be folded and fitted into a suitcase, both affording good protection and befuddling airlines who want to slap a fee surcharge onto bicycles. Bike Friday even went further with the idea, providing a set of wheels for the suitcase, so it could come along as a trailer.

They were so in to these concepts that they even built the suitcase into their logo, and the trailer idea into a badge on the frame.

But we quickly learned about the problems with this system. The bikes would not fit the suitcase if they had the racks installed. And the mounting points for the racks were rather weak, and would threaten to strip in repeated assembly/disassembly. Next, once the bike would arrive at its destination, there was the question of where to store the suitcases. In a circle tour, that would mean getting a hotel in the destination city to sit on the cases, often for up to three months. The Gatwick White House Hotel, for instance, was willing to do that for us, for 90p per day. On a three month tour, that's $260 storage cost for the two bags. Uh huh. Other cyclists have had better luck with hotels, but you never know.

Ok, take the cases along as trailers? Nah, the cases are too flimsy for that and the wheels too small. That is, for a real tour. We have found with a lot of often highly touted outdoor equipment, that it's great if you are just fooling around on a weekend, or maybe for a couple of weeks, but you can not rely on it for extended and often tough conditions.

That throws the Bike Friday rider maybe back in the pot with other cyclists - looking for a bike box at the departure end and getting the bike which is packed in that to the airport, and worse, finding and transporting a bike box in some foreign country and city, to make the return journey.

Given all this, we have found ourselves in some recent trips taking advantage of large plastic bags offered by Air Transat and Westjet, and rolling the bikes into these. The bag, at least, can usually catch any parts that the baggage handlers manage to crack off the bikes!

But in our last three trips we thought we would take advantage of the folding capacity of the bikes, together with the plastic bags. It does make for a small and perhaps neat looking package. But we are seeing some drawbacks now. One is that a folded Bike Friday looks like a welter of odd angled parts, with nothing obvious to grab on to. And when this is obscured inside a poly bag, it can be a puzzle (even to me) about how to move it around. And then the bag offers really minimal protection when the bike is subsequently mishandled.

These issues came home to us today, as we liberated the folded Bike Fridays from their partially shredded bags and had a look. Five things were not in the same condition as what we had trustingly left the people in Cancun with. An Ortlieb handlebar mount was shoved up out of position - we can fix that by loosening and tightening cables, a water bottle holder was twisted off, cable ties holding fenders in position were snapped, one $80 cork Ergon Grip was gouged, and the circular plastic chain guard on a front crank was smashed. All these, had they happened on the destination end, would be correctable. But the crazy one - Dodie's largest front chainring was bent and deformed, like a banana peel. How much force does it take to achieve that? Lots!

The broken chain guard. The plastic bag only succeeded in collecting one of the two broken off sections.

Chainring peeled like a banana. This would have been a death blow in some foreign airport.

This all has us rethinking the packing question. There is no good answer, as long as airlines employ gorillas to move the luggage. Maybe the bikes are going back to rolling into the plastic bags?

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Andrea BrownI agree, there aren't good solutions. This is the first bike trip we've taken where we actually started and ended up in the same place. AND we knew people in that city, who were willing to store our boxes out in the hallway AND the boxes were still there when we got back. So now these boxes, which were cobbled together in Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand, have taken three flight legs and still look pretty good, what with all the packing tape on them. It's not a perfect solution, but so far the bikes are virtually unharmed. We do remove front and back racks, however.
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1 year ago

Scott AndersonAs a counterpoint, if I’ve counted correctly we’ve flown with our Bike Fridays on 22 tours now, always with suitcases. We have never failed to find a hotel willing to store our suitcases for the duration of the tour (often up to three months), and I think always for free other than one time they charged us a 100 euro storage fee. Our only real mishap was last year, when UPS lost our suitcases - but we think that was at least partly our fault.

It’s true that the rack has to come off, but I’ve never found that to be a big deal. I do agree though about hauling a suitcase, which looks really unattractive to me. Much better to just pay the shipping cost to send them forward to the endpoint.
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1 year ago

Jacquie GaudetI'm with Scott on this. It took me a few tries, but I even found a hotel near the airport in Venice willing to receive and store our cases for 8 weeks. That was the most difficult one; the most it's taken before was 2 tries. It's worth it to us to pay a bit more for a hotel willing to do this, but every time they have also had a decent place to pack or unpack our bikes and even provided a hose or bucket of water to clean them up a bit.

Our current cases are much easier to use than the S&S case for my coupler-equipped bike (and fit any of the bikes we own) plus--and my back loves this--include an integral workstand. The downside is that they may trigger fees but the most we've paid so far is $50 each way on a round trip to Europe. On the other hand, we can manage with just one bike case each and no other checked bag, unlike my S&S case which barely holds my bike.

We have to do a bit of disassembly but don't find it a problem, except the time I broke my derailleur wire. That was entirely my own fault.
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1 year ago

Bruce LellmanWhen we go on trips to SE Asia, freedom is the most important thing, meaning we may enter at one point and leave to return home from another point hundreds or thousands of miles from the entry point. In terms of packing our Bike Fridays that means we have always used cardboard boxes. Andrea has fashioned a few from other boxes or cut down bike boxes. I tape them into box form. They are the exact size of the maximum allowed for checked baggage on any airline so we have never had a problem with the airlines. Cardboard boxes are always expendable if we come home from a different city than where we entered. It's a little bit of work and hassle to build boxes but in the end I believe it is the most versatile and definitely the cheapest way to go. One time in Bangkok we even found boxes that were the exact size we needed.
I wouldn't dream of using a suitcase at least in SE Asia mostly because I can't imagine any hotel holding two large suitcases for months without charging a lot of money. I left a backpack at a hotel in Bangkok for a month 20 years ago and was charged a dollar a day! What would two large boxes or suitcases cost today I wonder. Not worth it.
Even if we were to travel with suitcases (that, by the way cost a lot of money themselves) and we did find a hotel that would hold them, I would still view that as such a big hassle that I wouldn't want to do it just as the trip begins. I'd rather fashion a box at the end of the trip.
Bottom line: cardboard boxes. We have never had anything damaged in them. We can pack all sorts of stuff around the bikes and we have never come close to exceeding the weight limit. Cardboard boxes, man. Easiest, cheapest, expendable, easily replaceable. I would imagine that a person could even find a shipping company that would either have the right size box already or even be willing to make them for us. Less hassle is the way to go when overseas and we have found cardboard is that way to go.
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1 year ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesThanks for the thoughtful and informative comments, Bike Friday people. It seems like the cardboard argument is edging out the case argument, here at headquarters. But clearly our previous happy go lucky plastic bag days are ended!
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1 year ago

Larry MitchellWe don’t ride Bike Fridays but instead ride recumbent trikes. We wrestled with the same question for several years before finding the simplicity of cardboard boxes. In our case, a shorty wardrobe box from u-haul. Fits our folded trikes exactly, in our case, Alaska airlines has never questioned the size and only once questioned the combined 55 pound weight as which time I produced their documentation about bikes flying free, showed them a picture of the folded and assembled trike and then we simply went on.

The cardboard boxes have held up well and we even got 2 round trip flights out of the last set despite the luggage handling issues. When the boxes reach their end, I use the old ones to reinforce a feel day points of the new ones. We haven’t tried this on an overseas trip yet but remain hopeful.
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1 year ago

Keith AdamsI rode my Bike Friday on last summer's tour. It flew to the starting point in its suitcase. Prior to the tour itself my wife and I spent a week together at my family reunion, so I had the luxury of sending the case back home with her at the end of that week rather than having to worry about storing or shipping it. Knowing that was going to be the plan we chose an airline whose luggage policy allows two checked bags per person for no additional charge.

There were several reasons I elected not to use the trailer adapter (which I have), and to use panniers instead.

1: Gross weight. The suitcase and trailer together weigh about 20 pounds when empty. My four panniers weighed 8 pounds. That gave me 12 pounds to play with: I could either save the weight or spend it by carrying more stuff. I elected to save the weight.

2: Track width. The trailer's wheels do not align with the wheels on the bike, extending the "footprint" horizontally in both directions. That means that I would be forced to ride a foot or more farther into a traffic lane than I would otherwise need to do. On a shoulderless two-lane road, that's not appealing. Nor do I want to have my line further affected by things such as rumble strips, which are not always conveniently located with regard to smooth cycling.

3: Complexity. The trailer tires are a different size than those on the bike, meaning I'd need to carry even more spare tubes and tires than I would if using panniers.

4: Visibility. It's far from a certainty in my mind that drivers would actually see and account for the trailer. Although it doesn't extend very far past my left shoulder, if at all, it's just one more thing to fret about.

5: Maneuverability. I've dragged the trailer enough to know that the bike just isn't as agile, particularly on tight turns and in cramped quarters, as when it's not behind me.

The few upsides to the trailer simply cannot outweigh the downsides I've enumerated, at least for a long tour. What are the upsides? As I see them, they are:

1: Better security for the bike during air travel. Not perfect, but not bad. We've flown our BF tandem round trip to and from Europe five times and my NWT has flown twice; in no case has there been airline-induced damage.

2: No additional airline luggage fees. You've already covered that so I needn't expand on it. Parallel: it's easier to find transportation capable of dealing with regular suitcases than with oversize boxes.

3: Better weatherproofing. The trailer's pretty close to watertight, so there's less need to contain things in watertight inner packaging. That in turn makes the daily unpacking and packing tasks simpler by eliminating steps.

4: Simpler packing on a daily basis. Extending the thought above, packing a suitcase is easier than managing panniers because there's less need to fit things in small spaces. True, you can't always get away with the "just heave it all in and slam the lid closed" approach, but I have found that I spend less time trying to reorganize each day.

5: Generally better containment. I've noticed that my panniers seem to "explode" on most evenings, because I've scattered items I need to use throughout the panniers. That in turn means I have two, three, or even all four panniers to reorganize and repack each morning. It's at least nominally easier, or seems so, when everything is coming out of or going into the suitcase. There may be no actual time saving- I've not tried to measure that- but if nothing else it's less mentally challenging. Also, especially when I'm tenting, it keeps the tent tidier because I can chuck stuff into the suitcase and leave it outside the tent.
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1 year ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Keith AdamsWe started out using the BOB trailers. This does not solve, but only increases the difficulty of air travel, but it does address two of the shortcomings you mentioned: the single wheel tracks right behind you, and the tire is the same size as the Bike Friday. We switched to panniers, though, because unless you are leaving from and returning to home, the trailer is a whole extra thing. We never did seriously consider the Bike Friday trailer idea, for the reasons you mentioned.

About flying with the bikes in the cases, quite aside from storage, we used to struggle with getting them to fit. Our two bikes have different frame and stem dimensions, so we needed two different configurations, and we used to carry photos and maps to remind us how to do it. We also included a note for TSA advising them that if they pulled stuff out of the case there was no way they would get it back in.

The Andersens say they always succeed in getting hotels to hold their cases, but they are clearly better at this than we have ever been!
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1 year ago

Keith AdamsTo Steve Miller/GrampiesI have BOB but wouldn't expect to fly with it. I pull it with my mountain bike when I'm riding the C&O Canal.

Mine has 16 inch, not 20 inch / 406 tires so it still doesn't fix that issue.

I've never weighed it but am certain it outweighs my panniers. My mountain bike is not configured to accept racks so a trailer is my best option in that use case.
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1 year ago