• Renting I called Bicycle Sport Shop and a couple other stores. The problem is that people rent bicycles as entertainment, not transportation, and they’re priced accordingly. At $30 a day to start, that’s more than a car. A 10-day rental would have cost $210.
• Yellow Bike The Austin yellow bike project was in the middle of a move, and most of their bikes were in storage.
• Shipping my bike both ways — UPS or FedEx ground — would have run me about $80.
• Buying a bike The cheapest thing to do was to buy a bike. Academy had some cheap mountain bikes. Target’s were a bit cheaper. I ended up with a Magna Glacier.

I always wondered who bought those department-store bikes.

All was fine for a couple of days. Then: boom. The chain breaks, gets caught in the rear wheel and causes the bike to fishtail. I go down. Hard. I tore my new jeans and ripped a gash in my arm. Oops.

That turned out to be a very expensive “cheap” bicycle.

Check out what happened. The chain was so poorly made, that the metal itself bent and buckled:

Last year, I bought my own snowboarding gear. I snagged a great deal on the board from REI and picked up the bindings from Sports Basement. Since the prices were so good, I upgraded from EX to RX bindings.

Ride’s RX bindings are a step up from their EX model, which is a step up from the LX model. Got that? With an MSRP of over $200, this isn’t the bottom of their line.

Then why, Ride, would you use a plastic release?

If you’re interested in travelling with your bicycles, here’s what it will cost you:

Packing the bicycle

Before you can take your bike on a plane, you need to pack it in a bike box. Almost any bike shop will give you one of these for free. There are many YouTube videos teaching you how to box up your bicycle.

Aside: If you have an expensive bike or are planning to travel with your bike a lot, it’s worth investing in a hard case.

If you don’t want to pack the bike yourself, you can pay a bike shop to do this for you.

Bike shops in San Francisco

I called many of the bike shops in San Francisco. Here’s what they charge to box up a bike, sorted by price:

I’m not sure what Mike’s and Performance do for $100. Maybe they use gold tape on the box.

Bike shops in Auckland

Here’s what the bike shops in Auckland charge:

Airlines

Once your bike is all packed up, the airline may charge you another fee to accept the bicycle as a checked bag. This table’s sorted by airline name:

	Airline	Fee	Notes
	Air Canada	$50
	Air New Zealand	free
	AirTran	$79
	Alaska/Horizon	free
	American Airlines	$100	2
	Continental	$100	2
	Delta	$200
	Frontier	$50	2
	Hawaiian	$100	3
	JetBlue	$50	2
	Midwest	$50
	Qantas	free
	Spirit	$75
	US Air	$100	2
	United	$100
	V Australia	free
	Virgin America	$50
	Virgin Atlantic	free
	Virgin Blue/Pacific Blue	$20	1
	WestJet	free

Notes

[1] Included in your standard (paid) baggage allowance (cost is $20)
[2] Small bikes (measuring under 62 “dimensional” or “linear” inches) are free (included in your baggage allowance)
[3] $35 for flights within Hawaii

Mayor David Miller: “The city needs a network so cyclists can travel their entire trip safely.”

Check out all these hlmets: