QANTAS made us sign a waiver before flying our bikes - 'all care, no responsibility'. They got the 'no responsibility' part right but I'm not so sure about the 'all care'. I think someone ran over David's bike with a truck - well perhaps not quite - but the 'fragile' sticker was a complete waste of time. It's impossible to know whether the culprit was QANTAS or American Airlines but when the bike arrived in Denver, having flown from Sydney and changed planes in LA, it was badly damaged. The frame was bent. Maybe flying our bikes wasn't such a good idea after all.
Before you leap to the conclusion that we were total idiots trying to fly with bikes let me point out that these are not lightweight carbon fibre road bikes. They are sturdy aluminium framed mountain bikes - and we have flown them before. Earlier this year we took them to New Zealand without incident - (
click here for my blog post on 'Queenstown and the Flying Bicycles').
Thanks to a couple of helpful guys at the
Giant Bikes shop in Denver the bike has been repaired enough (hopefully) to last us for the next six weeks touring and cycling in the US. Their first reaction was that D needed a new bike. However having wrecked one almost new bike we were not inclined to give AA and QANTAS the chance to punish another one. At least I know what to get D for his birthday now!
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| Have bikes will travel. |
The good news is that we took the bikes for a quick spin this afternoon along the
Cherry Creek Trail near our hotel in Denver and both of them performed fine. Fingers crossed that D's bike will continue to be okay. The highlight was cycling past a field of Prairie Dogs - at least I think they were Prairie Dogs - super cute. Tomorrow we leave for Snowmass Village, near Aspen.
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| Cherry Creek Trail, Denver. |
Note: I don't accept money or other rewards for anything I write in this blog. I've given the Giant Bike shop in Denver a plug because Giant are great bikes and the guys were so helpful.
For the next post in this series click - here
For all my posts on this road trip click - here13 June 2014
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