Travelling with my bicyclefrom Europe to Australia
Travelling with my bicycleI took my mountain bike with me, with the main aim of exploring Canberra's cycling paths and off-road trails, and of riding in the Namadgi National Park. A diary of my cycling experience is available. This section is concerned with the details of the trip, such as packing the bike, transporting the bike on Italian trains, bicycle as luggage, quarantine in Australia, etc.
Despite the fact that I took very little luggage besides the bike, the total weight of my luggage, includind hand luggage, was about 28kg. As I am small, lightweight (about 64kg) and not too muscular, I found carrying all this a bit cumbersome, but luckily I had to do only small stretches at a time, and at train stations and airports I could use trolleys.
I could probably have flown from Verona, which would have allowed me to take trains with a bicycle carriage. This way, I could have avoided completely dismantling my bike, as British Airways only requires that you take off the pedals and rotate the handlebar sideways. However from Verona you fly only to Gatwick, so you have to spend an hour on a bus getting from Gatwick to Heathrow; moreover, the connection on the flight back is not that good.
As I plan to fly to England next year with my bike, I inquired about British Airways policy concerning bicycles. They confirmed what I had read on British Airways' Web site about removing the pedals and rotating the handlebar. They also gave the usual airline crap about deflating the tyres. I tried and explain that this matter has been thoroughly discussed in the (Internet) cycling community, and proved conclusively wrong. My tyres and tubes, for instance, are able to withstand 5 atmospheres. I pump them up at about 3 (that is, 50psi). Even in absolute void, they would be subject to a pressure differential of only 4 atmospheres. Now the cargo bay of an airplane is pressurized at about 1000m height, like the passenger section, where air pressure is about 10% less than at sea level. Deflating the tyres, on the other hand, can lead to damage to the tubes or the rims. The airline people stared at me like I was mad as I went through the physics. (I deserved it.) Needless to say, my solidly inflated tyres arrived in perfect shape!
(Incidentally, I have a mini-pump in my saddle bag, but I didn't bother using it during the three weeks. Once back home, I checked the tyre pressure, and saw it had gone down from the original 50psi to just above 40psi, still a safe proposition. In case you are wondering what kind of tubes I run, the brand is immaterial, the point being they are butyl.)
Once tagged, I had to take my bicycle to a special gate where oversize or fragile luggage is handled. I said "See you later" to my bike, and trusted to see it in good shape about thirty hours later.
On the plane I was flanked by two Portuguese couples.I had a pleasant chat with one of the ladies; she and her husbands were permanent residents in Australia. The others were an elderly couple, who spoke only Portuguese. They were flying, possibly for the first time in their life, to visit their daughter in Melbourne, the final destination of the plane we were in. I had noticed them at Heathrow, as they were escorted to the gate. A friendly Spanish-speaking hostess was able to communicate with them, and filled the immigration form for them. There was a moment of panic when we arrived in Sydney, as they tried to leave the plane, seeing that most people were leaving it. I had to sort of forcibly prevent them from doing so, and with the assistance of the other Portuguese pair we were able to convince them to stay seated, and wait for the plane to take them to Melbourne.
I repacked the bike, and went through customs. The Australians are very concerned (and rightly so) with involuntarily importing pests from abroad. Therefore they don't want you to take in any fresh food, or earth specimens, among others, without a quarantine. When the customs officials heard I had a mountain bike with me, they suggested at first to wash any traces of European earth from the wheels. As they inspected the wheels however, they found them clean enough (I had been riding on pavement for a couple of months), and let me go without further ado.
I proceeded to the Qantas transfer desk, where the bike wasn't weighted, but was again handled separately from ordinary luggage. Similarly, as I was waiting at the carousel in Canberra, my bike materialized in some other part of the hall.
So some heavish items, including my saddle bag full of tools, went back to the hand luggage. According to well-known laws, in the course of my trip every single security officer was puzzled by what he/she saw on the X-scan screen, and wasn't pacified until she/he saw my Allen keys and stuff. Nothing wrong with this, I am quite happy to pay such a small price for security, but next time I'll try and pack the tools with the registered luggage for sure.
I did not get off in Bangkok, but stayed in the plane and had a thorough stretching session. A German girl was doing the same, a few rows back, with a very professional approach: she must have stretched every single muscle in her body! A child was staring astonished at the two of us, and his father had to explain to him that we were just "stretching".
We were going from the summer solstice in Australia to the winter solstice in Europe. It was interesting to see the different strategies people adopted to deal with the dramatic drop in temperature. I saw a person at Sydney airport already dressed in full Northern winter regalia: only watching her made me sweat. I took the simplistic approach of dressing lightly, and changing into warmer clothes before landing in London. A guy next to me (nice chap, BTW) did all the trip in shorts and sandals. When we were approaching London, I saw him reach for his hand luggage, and thought he was going for winter clothes too. But he only pulled out a sweater, and left the airplane still in shorts and sandals!
When I arrived at Milano Linate, my bike did not show up. My connection at Heathrow had been quite close, so this might have caused the problem. I filed a PIR (property irregularity report), and proceeded home. While travelling home on a crowded train, I realized it wasn't too bad not to have to carry my bike myself. And in fact the day after a black Mercedes sedan dropped my precious cargo on my door steps. (That's travelling in style!) This time everything was in order: I had done my packing homework with the proper care. In particular, I had secured the dropouts to the spacers of the aluminium antishock frame with zip ties. Actually, a few zip ties had broken, but without consequences. Next time I will use stronger zip ties, or pairs of them.
When I arrived in Trento, the temperature was a pleasant +6 Celsius. After Christmas, however, a North wind started blowing, and the temperature dropped to -6C, and stayed constantly under the freezing point for more than a week. Liberal snow came later, so it was winter alright. So I took my bike to the workstand, cleaned and lubed it well, and switched to the slick tyres I use for winter training on pavement, waiting for the weather to ease up a bit so that I felt like resuming cycling. In the meantime, I treated myself to a bit of seasonal carbo-loading...
It was only four months later, on May 3 1997, that I could ride again
in summer gear.