March 9, 2022
The Smith Loop loop
The suitcase shuffle
I wake up in the middle of the night with a new solution to a problem that’s been running through our heads the last few days - how to manage our suitcases for the nine months we’re on the road. We could just manage this by shipping the bikes in cardboard boxes as many folks do of course, planning to find or build ones at the end of the tour for the flight home. We’ve come to really appreciate the security and handling convenience of packing them into a hard-shell suitcase that can be checked at the airport as a normal piece of luggage.
But there’s the problem of what to do with it while we’re on the road, especially for an absence as long as this one will be. When we first started planning this trip, we found a willing friend in France who generously offered to store them for us - we’d ship them to him at the start of the tour, and he’d ship them back to us at the end. We’d use Eurosender, the vendor we found in Antwerp last year to ship our luggage forward to Viterbo. They’re a door-to-door service, so it felt like a reasonable imposition on our friends.
One reason this solution attracted us was that when we began planning this trip we had an open mind about how long we’d be away and where we’d fly home from. With no fixed endpoint or date in mind, we didn’t have a final destination to ship them to. An interesting logistics problem, and asking our friend if he could help was almost the first thing we did when starting to pencil out this adventure.
So we had a plan. The only last minute detail was expected to be easy - find some shrink-wrap, because Eurosender requires suitcases to be shrink wrapped before they’ll accept them for delivery. Rachael had a terrible time finding any in Antwerp last year, so the plan this time was to buy some here and take it on the flight with us. It sounds simple enough, but we’ve been unsuccessful at finding an appropriate roll. Looking back now, it’s pretty remarkable that Rachael found just what we needed last summer.
So we started looking into what might be available in Barcelona, but still haven’t come up with anything. Obviously it’s out there somewhere and we’ll work out something when we arrive, but it’s an irritant and stressor we’d like to have a solution to before we land.
Finally, the obvious solution came in the night. We’ll just send them straight to the final destination, just as we always have in the past; and we’ll use UPS, which will take your suitcase as is at one of their Mail Box, etc storefronts. The problem looks much different now that we feel committed to the entire nine month journey and have settled on Nice as the final destination. I crack open the iPad to see if there are any UPS stores in Barcelona (there are none in Antwerp, which was why we turned to Eurosender last summer) and was happy to see that there are ten of them. UPS has a much greater penetration in Spain than Belgium, where there’s only one Mail Boxes, etc store in the entire country.
Rachael and I talk it over first thing in the morning and she immediately agrees with the new plan. Just one detail - we have to find a hotel in Nice that will store our suitcases for nine months. While I walk down to New Morning Bakery for breakfast and caffeine Rachael browses through hotels in Nice and starts firing off inquiries as to whether they’ll store our luggage.
When I return, we look at her selections together, prioritize them, and then I pick up the phone. We’ll just keep calling hotels until we find a taker. Surprisingly it only takes two tries. The agent at the second hotel is uncertain at first. Actually, he flat-out rejects the idea at first because he misunderstands and thinks we want to store our bicycles there for nine months. Once that misunderstanding is cleared up he wants to know the measurements of the suitcases. It would be fine in the off-seasons but in summer when the hotel is often fully booked storage space would be a concern. Once I give him the exact measurements though Raphael thinks for a minute and then agrees. We book the room, we have a plan. Aah, that feels good!
The ride
It’s cold, breezy, and lightly misting when I walk down to New Morning Bakery. It feels refreshing actually, but not conducive of a bike ride. It remains that way all morning, and intermittent showers are threatened into midafternoon. We decide we’ll just do our own thing today and fit in whatever ride we can. Rachael’s thing today is to bike down Peoria Road again, checking out side roads and piling up miles without ever getting too far from home. She’ll return in late afternoon with 43 miles to her credit but complaining about how bad the winds were and how much she misses the suspension seat post on her Bike Friday. Assuming she keeps the Straggler as her second bike, it’s clear that we need to order a second seat post for her next winter.
I have a different plan for the day, but we at least start out together by biking down to the Willamette on Jefferson (oddly enough, the same street we biked down to the Willamette from our apartment in Portland). Once there, she turns north for the Van Buren Bridge and I turn south toward the mouth of Mary’s River.
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My ride today isn’t the most interesting one around, but it fits the specifications for the day - not too far or exposed, and never so far from the motel that I can’t turn back toward shelter without too much damage if the weather turns foul. Rachael’s going down the right bank of the Willamette, and I’m staying on the left. It’s country I already know well from our last stay, and starts with a ride through Willamette Park nd then out the dead end spur on Kiger Island.
It’s a nice ride out Kiger Island, but cold and gray today. It’s pre-spring still so it’s all pretty brown. There are a few birds about - kestrels on the power lines, puffed up and looking chilled; a red-tail roosting in a tall hemlock above Booneville Channel; but the most colorful critters out today are the free-range chickens wandering across the road near the end of the pavement.
A half hour into the ride, I’m amused to look down at the Garmin and notice Rachael’s position. She’s less than a mile away, almost directly across the river from me. I look for views to the east thinking I might be lucky and be able to see her over there, but there’s too much riparian growth in the way.
I’ve enjoyed a tailwind biking south, but once I backtrack north on my way off Kiger Island it’s suddenly much chillier. Even fully layered I can feel the chill in my arms through the sleeves of my cycling jersey and jacket. It’s a relief when I get back to the highway and head south for a few miles; and when I come to the turnoff for Smith Loop the sun is cautiously starting to break through and provide a bit of warmth. By the time I complete the loop and start circling west and north again the weather has improved considerably.
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For the return home I cross west to Bellfountain Road, a fine cycling route that rolls along above the valley giving nice views across toward the coast range with only the occasional log truck to distract you. I’m biking straight north now though and straight into the wind, and it’s a relief when I near Philomath and turn east to follow the Mary’s River back to town.
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Today's ride: 35 miles (56 km)
Total: 2,550 miles (4,104 km)
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