Spouse and I enjoy cycling enough when we're traveling that we're considering buying a collapsible bike to bring with us instead of renting shitty bikes when we get to our destination. The problem I keep running into, though, is one that I hope has been solved - what do you do with the bike box when you arrive? Oh, and we would be buying a tandem which probably makes things more complicated.
The way I see it - get a bike with couplers on the frame, break it apart, stuff it in a purpose-built case (or two). If we're flying with it, that gets checked as luggage. We have our own bags full of clothes and stuff. We arrive wherever. Now what?
My pie-in-the-sky vision of this is that we get the bike off the baggage carousel, assemble it in the airport, throw our pannier-suitcases on it, and ride off into the sunset. But then we have a case (or two) meant for the bike frame that I don't know what to do with. Or, we haul everything to a hotel and assemble the bike there, but what if we want to do something like a one-way tour?
(For housekeeping purposes - yes, we know how to ride a tandem and own one already. I've already looked into and test-ridden the Bike Friday system and didn't like it, so we're looking at a full-sized bike with couplers. We've done other vacations that involved bike touring, but we rented a bike and were in a place that allowed us to courier our bags. I'm not expecting that level of luxury all the time.) |