December 10, 2023
The Duffle Shuffle
The nickel dime airlines, like Flair (hey, I thought we were done with them on the previous page!) can be seen to advertise some ridiculously low prices. That's because, for one thing, the prices usually apply to returning from and not going to a tourist hot spot and secondly, if you dare need anything but your shorts and tee shirt along for the ride, beware!
If Flair so much as sees a Grampie coming, that's where their stock immediately shoots up. In terms of dodging fees, we are hopelessly sluggish and a great target. We have two bikes that, in suitcases or not, are too heavy for normal checked baggage, and we have twelve (yes twelve) lithium bike batteries, each individually wrapped. We have big round helmets, big flat DaBrims, and a Best Buy full of tablets, battery banks, and smart phones.
It's not just Flair, as well. Every hotel in and around Cancun (that we messaged) either will not store the bike cases or other suitcases or wants a fortune to do so. Flair and the hotels give us reason to not bring too many bike or suit cases. We had it pretty well figured, we thought, with the two bikes in cases, one small folding rolling duffle to check, and a pile of other bags and boxes to carry on to the plane. Then in Playa we would bribe a hotel into keeping the bike cases for the month, with other things, like the duffle, stuffed inside the cases.
We had it figured, that is, until Dodie looked at the pile of stuff, all ready to go. "How are we supposed to move all this stuff onto the ferry, and then the 620 bus, and then the Sky Train?" she astutely observed.
"And why do you have the expression of a cow?" she mused, as I chewed over her last observation. Finally, "wheels", I said, "we need more wheels." By this I meant one more wheeled duffle. With that, we could each be dragging one wheeled bike case and one wheeled duffle, with a few remaining goodies in a backpack (or two). With this idea we were now feeling smug, because Flair had already conned us into paying for a second checked bag. Now we would show up at their counter with basically four checked bags. That is their dream customer, but at least we have already paid.
How sweet it will be when we at last take off down Highway 307 on the way to Tulum, on our compact, carefully organized Fridays!
p.s. We think we can buy the second duffle at Walmart for $35, but we checked Amazon as well. There was one that I found there, using the desktop computer, for $47, and I described it to Dodie. She searched it on her tablet, and found the identical listing, but for $161. I mean, the photos, the included video, and the text were identical between our two listings. Only the vendor differed. Ain't capitalism wonderful, but buyer beware!
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5 months ago