It’s all a bit depressing reading the news. I was trying to cheer myself up.

So I just packed my bike as we’re heading out to Switchbacks on Friday.  I’ve been lucky enough to do a lot of trips away with the bike. Early on I was amusingly unprepared.

For my first trip in Morzine 2003: D/U bushings completely gone on the shock. XC tyres lasted about a day. Hope Minis failed when I really needed them most.

After that things improved. Other than forgetting to pack any shims for IS brakes (remember those?) and spending 10 days trying to stop the brakes rubbing.

It’s always a relief when you’ve got somewhere to build the bike up with no forgotten components, and find you have matching gloves and a helmet. Most of the time now we drive, but flying this time so added spice of baggage handling…

So mine are a bit rubbish. I’m sure you have some better ones…

Went to ciclo about 8 years ago, my third trip. As always I took the cardboard bike box my alpine was delivered in, instead of a proper bike bag. Unfortunately this was the year it rained, a lot. By the Wednesday I had to sweep up the pile of brown mush that my bike box had turned into on Marco’s terrace. I replaced it with a CRC bag on “next day delivery” via dhl. Except next day meant Friday afternoon, to the the spar in pitres.

How about the time when a mate and I went to whistler, and the airline decided it would be a good idea to send our bikes to Los Angeles…

Still, they paid for 2 days hire of a pair of park bikes while ours were retrieved and delivered to us (at 2:00am in the morning), so it could have been worse…

That walk up Ciclo’s stairs was always fun with a bike bag 😉 Proper rite of passage getting it to the top unaided!

We’ve never lost a bike (touches wood while tempting fate!)

A mate did ride break his Elllsworth Truth Swingarm right at the top of the trail above Moab. Can’t remember what it’s called but you ride for an hour and THEN you end up on the Jeep trail. To say he was upset is probably under selling it as he had to put it back on the bus and go back to town.

Good few years back on a trip to whistler. Coming through the baggage hall at the airport and someone’s frame was lying on the floor with ruminants of the cardboard box around it. Been there for a while by the looks of it.

Telling the story two days later in the lift line to some mates who’d arrived earlier. One of my mates was French and he turned around, grabbed some other random (to me) French guy and have quite the animated conversation with him. Turns out his bike hadn’t arrived, I’d remembered the details of the frame (as you do), and it was his. He got it back. I got bought numerous beers. Happy endings all round.

Mate left his rear axle (strange no one else has type) in the garage.

He was in Italy and could see on his phone via the web cam in the garage where he had left it.

@jwray – that is a good result.  I’ve watched baggage handlers load and unload bike bags and it makes you wince.

@dogbone. Oh that’s just grim. I always stick them back on the bike. In the old days you could probably find a QR but so many pitch differences on thru-axles now.

Bike? No stories. Windsurfers? Way too many.
Nothing matches seeing your board bags still on the tarmac as you taxi out on a long weekend trip somewhere. Unless it’s seeing your gear being thrown off conveyor belts onto trucks.

This was the level of sympathy my mate got a couple of days into a riding holiday in Bulgaria when he broke his frame. Karma had it’s evil way a day or so later when my wheel bearings collapsed.

Putting all my riding gear in my bike bag to help protect it… and when I arrived at the desk it weighed in at 45kg, 10kg over the weight limit.
I used my phone to book an extra bag, which was a fair saving over paying the desk price. Moved normal clothes from my rucksack into a bag for life as my carry on bag, and moved riding kit in to my rucksack which got checked in to the hold.
It all worked lovely, but had to be done near the front on the check in queue.

Mate of mine who does zero maintenance to his bike got less than a days riding in Molini on a weeks holiday, brakes goosed, snapped cranks, dropper gubbed….

And then we noticed a smell. He’d put 3 boiled eggs in his camelbak the first morning from the hotel brekkie for eating out on the trails, and forgot about them. After 4 days being smashed in his pack, and the heat, you’ve never smelt anything like it. 🤢🤮

In the arrivals lounge on Crete in the early ’90s, waiting for passport control as they unloaded the plane outside by backing a flat-bedded truck underneath and dropping everything out of the hold.

My friends were loving it as I was the only one who’d taken a bike on our package holiday.

I didn’t actually see my cardboard bike box drop, as the queue moved on – but my trusty Kili Flyer was unharmed. That bike was bombproof!

Oops, got one. Got a lift with the Jekyll to Weymouth for a bit of house sitting.
Bike was locked wheels to frame with my Hiplock. Keys back home on the dressing table.

It’s all coming out now 🙂

@the00 – that reminds me how I was crowing how light my bike bag was. When I got to check it, it was overweight. All all my riding buddies had dumped their stuff into my bag. The scamps 😉 I think we had to employ the hidden foot under the bag while it was being re-weighed.

Another mate left a day early (from Ciclo) and sat in the hot airport with his bag for 90 minutes in the check in q. Nearly missed his flight. We turned up the next day to similar queues only to be herded to the front and expedited into departures.

No idea why but we weren’t complaining!

@nobeerinthefridge. Lifetime ban for that. No right of appeal. That’s nasty…

Not my bike, but I arrived in Les Arcs a few years ago without a stitch of riding kit, no shorts, no jerseys nothing.

Oh and @tthew if they were hope minis you might have saved him a more serious injury!

@p-jay. It’s always a dilemma. Do I put my ride kit in with my bike and hope they turn up together. Or risk losing one and trying to find replacements. I always carry one set of riding kit in my hand luggage if I’m flying now.

Years ago, some friends of mine were going to Bike Village. I was supposed to go that year but had “decided” to break my collarbone instead. On the night before they flew out, one posted on here in a bit of a panic. He’d stripped the threads out of his fork’s disc brake bosses! What would he do?

Thankfully all he needed to do was calm down and realise that IS brake mounts weren’t threaded, but he seemed to be in a bit of a state before STW managed to explain this to him. He blamed it all on having a drink or two while he was packing his bike up.

First year I took my bike to the Alps. Decided to hire a solid box from a known company. Box fails to show and the company state they have sent it but no tracking number and zero help.(numptys)
So scrambling around my local bike shops begging for boxes and packing bits 2 hrs before my flight from Liverpool.
just made the flight…..and the bike got there ok.

Imagine the scene…many years ago, an entire flight’s worth of people back at Heathrow waiting around the baggage claim conveyor…wondering why it’s taking ages and no baggage arriving off plane, getting all angsty and impatient, strange alarm buzzer occasionally sounding followed by a loud crashing sound, hmmmm.  Becoming suspicious I rounded the corner to see that my full suss bike in its flimsy soft bag had jammed in the conveyor entry gate at the front of everyones baggage queue, lying half in half out the gate. The buzzing sound was the alarm making the metal curtain automatic barrier lower until it smashed into my bike lying on its side raising back up then doing the same again…it had been doing the same thing repeatedly for 10 minutes or so. Luckily the bike was Alu and was not damaged, pretty sure a carbon bike would have been toast….I pulled the bike out and scurried away from the 300 or so people looking less than amused towards the pesky cyclist…

Last year Lanzarote, team mate turns up with a bike that had a rusted up worn out headset, 160mm rotor with a 180mm mount , couldn’t get all the gears this was on a bike ready to race the following day!

My wife was packing our bags once and was going to put one set of identical kit in each suitcase in case one went missing, she then asked me which one was my best kit and which case should it go in, took her a while to work out why i said don’t put it in the one that might go missing first.

@dogbone that was with us! He left his axel for his forks but it wasn’t a normal one. He could see it on his webcam. It was the same brand who sponsored Andreu Lacondeguy who is a good friend of Igor my guide so we called him and he helped us sort out an urgent replacement!

We had a girl turn up recently without her front wheel. We teased her for ages, showing her how to wheelie before I gave her a spare wheel which I had 🙂 Lovely girl, she got a lot of teasing though!

My first bike holiday away (BIKE VERBIER) back a long time ago. I took my shock off to check it and one of the top hats rolled away never to be found again. My mate managed to make me one out of a filed down door entry system! My next trip I got a new bike which arrived the day before departure, got it all build and ready but could I find my passport? Nope. Turned up 5 years later in a coffee jar in my camper van!

That’s made me check I know where my passport is… yep right where I left it the last time I was worried I had lost it 😉

Forgetting a whole wheel is quite something. I mean an axle you can kind of get but a wheel? Surely before you close the bag you count one frame and two wheels….

We drive 1003 miles with 4 bikes on the back rack. At the foot of the climb to Les Gets we acquired a puncture in Tanigines.
On Sunday.
4pm.
With the bikes on the car.

Various permutations of taxi, riding up the damn hill pulling a suitcase and the kids, finding a hotel, sleeping in the car, driving on the flat etc were explored.

Eventually a couple of locals came to our rescue with a tyre plug, another can of tyre foam and some tools on thier garage…..

@alex she is an astrophysicist researcher, working on rockets and all sorts of stuff. That’s what I said, she only had to count up to two! Brilliant fun that week.

@doug_basqueMTB.com – that’s the problem, her mind was too highly trained for the minutiae of life 🙂 That’s what I tell my wife when I can’t find my car keys.  As an aside we’re hoping to ride with you next year (you were full this year for the trip we wanted). My mate Matt will have been in touch, and another mate Nick Cummins from this parish can’t speak highly enough of that trip.

Obviously I’ll be bringing both wheels 🙂

@matt_outandabout – that’s a bit grim. Mate’s van blew a tyre in the car park is Les Vans. After much faffing with sealant and diddy compressor we got it sealed enough to get back to where we were staying. Rural France out of season is not a place to find a new tyre for a T5. And then they’ll only sell you a pair! We all chipped it as it was astronomical!

Not me , ‘a friend’ was doing the Tour Aotearoa, length of NZ. Starts in 90 mile beach far north where there is … nothing. He lives in Wellington, lets call him Dave as that’s his name. He arrives in 90 mile beach, unpacks bike to discover he left his front wheel in wellington. Somehow he managed to get something that got him to Auckland where his wife had couriered his wheel to him at vast expense. Frankly, I’m surprised that all he forgot.

I can’t believe this ‘forgetting a wheel’ is a thing.  Sure I’ve seen people turn up at car parks noticeably ‘under-wheeled’ but on a big trip? No, does not compute. I’m now going into the shed to make sure I’ve packed a pair tho just to be sure…

I remember doing a big day out in the Alps and having to catch the last lift from Chatel I think. We missed it by minutes so then needed to either ride about 20km round the mountain or get a cab for five blokes and bikes. Somehow our fluent french speaker sorted us out a mini-bus. As the last one got in the heavens opened and we drove home in an epic thunderstorm.

Bullet dodged.

Obviously I’ll be bringing both wheels 🙂

You know what’s gonna happen don’t you!

Back in 2004, first trip to Morzine booked. I then get seconded to a work project involving travel to California, one trip the fortnight before the holiday. On the weekend before the holiday I was riding with some colleagues and crashed, cutting my temple and disturbing my collar bone- not broken luckily.

Arrived back at Heathrow on the Weds, physio appt booked Thursday and then drove to Morzine Fri with an iffy shoulder. Quite interesting riding with a shoulder that felt every bump on 80mm SIDs!

@alex will look forward to that. Always god a good word to say about Nick too!

I went to Colorado and Utah in the summer of 2008.

On the morning of departure to a pre-paid fully supported guided 5 day trip to Bryan Head I managed to wash out my front wheel and dump myself on to the ground in the motel car park in St George…

When I got back up I thought, hmm, something isn’t quite right. It was then I noticed my left index finger was at a jaunty angle. Best of all it wouldn’t reseat and needed an op. No cycling for me!

$1100 for a tee shirt. And my mates all started calling CP. and always ask after I do something stupid/hurt myself ‘did you get out the car park this time?’

Oh how I’ve laughed…

Because my hand was in a splint I had to get my mate to box up my bike. He didn’t do it quite right but I really wasn’t able to sort it out myself and the bottom air valve on the pikes got ground down en route and I had to send them off to get fixed when I got home.