Taking your bike on the plane is doable, but check with the airline you're travelling with and find out what their fees and requirements are. There are one or two airlines that still carry bicycles for free, but most are charging $100 or more, sometimes per leg of an itinerary. If your itinerary involves multiple airlines, find out the rules for each airline you are using. Better yet, work out an itinerary that involves as few airlines and as few changes of aircraft as possible. For domestic travel, boxing the bikes and shipping them with FedEx Ground or UPS to a hotel at your destination or to a friend is frequently the best option.
Hardshell travel cases offer the best protection for air travel, but storage becomes an issue while you're on tour. Some of us think that just wheeling an unboxed bicycle up to the check in counter and turning the handlebars sideways and removing the pedals is a better option than using a soft travel case or cardboard box. The theory is that the baggage handlers will see a bicycle and treat it carefully instead of seeing a cardboard box and throwing it around. This has worked well for me on 3 trips to Europe so far. AAA publishes excellent road maps, I remember the state and county maps for California being excellent for cyclists. www.trektools.com is an excellent source for maps of European countries. Amazon.com is another good source for maps of foreign countries. IGN (Institut Geographique Nationale) is a good source for maps of France; TCI (Touring Club Italiano) publishes maps of the various Italian regions that are excellent for cycle touring. Lonely Planet just brought out new editions of their cycling guides to Italy, France and (I think) the UK. The original editions were excellent but have been out of print for sometime, and some of therouting information was becoming obsolete because of new road construction. I would expect the new editions to be at least as good as the old ones. Rough Guide travel books are not cycling specific, but are excellent guide books. I used them for Tuscany, Sicily and Ireland and found them to be very useful. On Aug 19, 6:17 pm, Don <[email protected]> wrote: > I am not new to biking but I am new to touring. I've got the bike/s > (Sam Hillborne, Myata 610) and most of the basics. I also have a > handle on touring within my state (Florida). But I need some help with > planning some tours in other parts of the USA and overseas. I have > some (probably dumb) questions about how one transports their bike to > other distant locations and how one get a good guide for some of these > tours. For example, after Easter I will have a week and my wife and I > want to head to Northern California and do some touring that would > take in the wine country and surrounding area. I don't really want to > book a guided tour with rented bikes etc. Now maybe to start that is > absolutely the best way to go. But all of the ones I have seen are > very pricey and extremely structured to the group. Being new to this > group I just figured I would lay it out there and see what information > I might be able to gather. I am sure that there are various websites > or other resources I could be directed to. I am not sure if this is OK > but I will give you my email address so that if any want to send me > stuff they can. Thanks in advance for any help you might give. > Cheers, > Don > [email protected] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
