September 4, 2023
Inspiration, Routing, Building Boxes, Frustration, Resolution
After all that, our bikes beat us to Rochester
This year’s tour was conceived and routed by my husband, Jim. He graciously agreed to write the following introduction:
How this tour came to be:
There are 11 Finger Lakes in upstate New York, roughly between Syracuse and Rochester. I was pretty much unaware of them until I saw the Andersons account of passing through the area in their journal Road To Rome, Part 1, in 2021 (Rome1). I was struck by the beauty of the area and decided that our next tour should be there. We already had something planned for 2022, (ImpressivelyMeanderingRoute). So here we are, headed for Finger Lakes in 2023. We’re going to touch 9 of the 11 lakes, plus gorges and waterfalls (see map below). This trip, my wife Genny and I will be traveling with our friends Amber and Rich, who also toured with us in Oregon last year.
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Prologue
A week and a half before departure date, we had a hectic weekend. To take the bikes with us, I built Meiners boxes, (CrazyGuy-Meiners Box), which I’ve done before. Designed by John Meiners over on CG, they require minimal disassembly of the bike while protecting the bike far better than the usual bike box. I’ve shipped them and flown with them on previous trips.
As I finished these boxes and weighed them, I was distressed to find them coming out about 5 pounds heavier than expected. I’d done everything the same as before, so I was a bit perplexed. Then I realized that the cardboard I’d used to skin the boxes was double wall cardboard. I’d gotten it free from a local bike shop and hadn’t even thought about how thick it was. A bike box is a bike box is a bike box, right? Double wall cardboard weighs about 40% more than the more common single wall. That very neatly accounted for the extra weight. However, it was too late to do anything about it. It was Friday, August 25.
I’d never had any problems before getting boxed bicycles to meet the 50 lb. total weight limit observed by the airlines. I couldn’t get these below 53 pounds. This is particularly irritating since United is currently waiving the oversize fee (normally $200 per bike per direction) for bicycles. The overweight fee, however, is $150 per bike per direction and they are not waiving that.
If it is going to cost $300 each way to fly two bikes, then it was time to look at shipping instead. BikeFlights could ship them at a weight of 55 pounds for $415 each way, and we wouldn’t have to deal with bike boxes in the airports. Aggravation avoidance does have a value but maybe it’s not worth $230. But because we will not have to transport the boxes to and from the Rochester hotel, Genny was able to downsize the arrival rental car and completely do away with the departure rental car, so the whole thing was almost a wash. But to get the bikes to Rochester by September 6, BikeFlights recommended shipping by August 28.
Dealing with the BikeFlights website was an adventure. They had just done a major re-vamp and the website was glitchy. I was trying to set up round trip shipping. I’d finish up the first stage with everything looking good. Then, when I started filling in blanks for the return trip, the website would re-write the outgoing data with a delivery date in Rochester of September 28, rather than September 5. I called BikeFlights support and spoke to a very nice young man who was able to replicate the bug and who then filled out everything on his end and emailed me the shipping stickers.
Meanwhile, Amber and Rich, who had intended to ship their bikes from the start, inadvertently let it slip to BikeFlights that their boxes (also Meiners) were wood framed. They were then informed that, for some obscure reason, BikeFlights doesn’t like wood framed boxes, although UPS, who does the actual shipping, doesn’t care. However, BikeFlights ultimately refused to accept their boxes for shipping. BikeFlights has a deal with UPS that greatly reduces the shipping cost. Shipping directly via UPS costs almost twice as much as via BikeFlights on UPS. They then checked with their airline but Southwest Airlines wouldn’t accept boxes of that size. At the last minute, they decided to have their bikes packed by a LBS into boxes that Southwest would accept. Thankfully LBS-owner, Duke, was able to make that happen on very short notice.
So Amber and Rich, who originally intended to ship their bikes, wound up flying with them while we, who had originally intended to fly our bikes, wound up shipping them. We’ll have to see how it all works out.
I delivered our bikes in their boxes to UPS on August 28, as recommended, where the boxes were scanned into their system without a hitch. Then came the fun of testing the AirTags, which I had hidden on the bikes last Spring. The AirTags were seen three times after delivery to UPS: once at their big facility in San Pablo, CA; once just southwest of Chicago, at another big UPS facility; and finally at UPS in Rochester. The rest of the time, they were probably deep inside a truck, unable to contact a passing iPhone. Meanwhile, UPS tracking simply said the bikes were in transit.
The Hotel in Rochester has agreed to accept UPS delivery, and to hold the bike boxes while we are riding around the Finger Lakes. We’re packing everything else in boxes that can be broken down and stored inside the empty bike boxes.
The rest of the packing is straightforward – we’ve done it many times before. All there is left to do is get up at ODark30 and catch a plane to Rochester.
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We’ll be driving to and from Tucson again this winter, so maybe we could stitch Napa into our drive agin and compare notes on our year.
8 months ago
It would be great to see you both again, if you are able to make it to Napa. And Kelly doesn't know it yet, but we have thrown around the idea of visiting her in Tucson this winter so, maybe we will see you there as well.
8 months ago
8 months ago
8 months ago