Bikes on a plane

When I went to New Zealand last year, I decided to take my bike with me. I’d have a van the whole time, so moving it around with me would be easy. And Air New Zealand allowed me two free bags, one of which could be a bicycle.

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:

Shop Price
Warm Planet BIkes $35-40
Sports Basement $45 ($30-60)
Valencia Cyclery $45
The Freewheel $50
Lombardi Sports $50
Pacific Bicycle $50
REI $60
Box Dog Bikes $70
American Cyclery $70–85
Performance Bike $100
Mike’s Bikes $100
Mission Bicycle Company —
Pedal Revolution —
Roaring Mouse —

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:

Shop Price (NZD) USD equivalent
Bike Barn $35–40 $25–28
Hedgehog Bikes $40–50 $28-36

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

What Mark Fiore is doing with his Pulitzer Prize money

Newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Fiore — whose app is now in the iTunes Store — had this to say:

Since winning the prize brought attention to Apple’s policy of rejecting iPhone apps that “ridicule public figures” I figure the least I can do is devote more resources to ridiculing public figures.”

More app store hypocrisy

Earlier this year, the nuns on Cupertino’s app store approval team removed 5000 applications for having sexual content. Fine. Be a prude. But what makes this funny is that Apple’s left hand doesn’t know what its right hand is doing: the music store will sell you D12’s Nasty Mind, which contains lyrical gems such as this:

Hoe you can quote this – your breath is smellin like
you done sucked a senior citizen’s old dick in goat spit (god damn!)

It’s one thing to be a prude. It’s another thing to be a homophobic prude. How are eight different apps for locating strip clubs is okay, but a a gay sightseeing guide isn’t?

Don’t cancel

Liz Danzico wrote a great little essay on two flaws in our culture:

  • Saying things we don’t mean to be “polite” (“Let’s get together soon”)
  • Agreeing to do something and then cancelling on the person

The post is concise and thoughtful — read the whole thing — and concludes with this:

4. Don’t cancel
Ever.

Next time you’re tempted to cancel, do the opposite. See what happens if you show up instead. You might just change culture.

Try it.

Disc name as user interface

I recently installed Windows 7. Having installed Snow Leopard many times, I was curious to see how it would compare.

Before you even get started, you see an example of the little details Apple pays attention to, but Microsoft is too lazy to care about. Insert the disc in to your drive.

  • The Mac OS X Snow Leopard disc is named “Mac OS X Install DVD.”
  • The Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) disc is named “GRMCULXFRER_EN_DVD.”

GRMWhat?

Xcode and the run-on sentence

Last night, I ran Software Update and updated Xcode. Here’s the description Apple provided:

Xcode 3.2.2 is an update release of the developer tools for Mac OS X. This release provides bug fixes in gdb, Interface Builder, Instruments, llvm-gcc and Clang optimizer, Shark, and Xcode and must be installed on Mac OS X 10.6.2 Snow Leopard and higher. See the accompanying release notes for detailed instructions, known issues, and security advisories.

breathe.