20th Feb 2011 - Flying Back to Blighty (takes a very long time)
Today was a matter of getting on that plane... We got up early and set off at about 10am having chucked out lots of stuff to lighten our bags and get everything in. Our flight wasn't until 3pm but we needed to get bike boxes from the Qantas office at the airport and then do the tedious business of making the bikes fit in them (lowering saddle, removing or lowering handle bars, removing one wheel 'cos the boxes are not that long, taking the pedals off, adding just enough additional stuff to the pannier to keep the weight under 23kg (the current Qantas limit for the hold - but not enforced down to the gram since my box weight slightly over at 23.5kg I think) but not leave you with too much to take into the cabin as hand baggage. And avoiding any tools, penknives, spokes, oil cans, etc, in the hand luggage since that would likely come under the anti-terrorist (anti-tourist?) legislation. So this packing mullarky takes a while.We made it onto the plane, and I'm typing this from a height of 34000 feet over Urumqi, and at a ground speed of 472mph. Going to NZ is great fun but the international flights are somewhat length - about a full 24hr day spent in the air plus a couple of stops (Melbourne and Hong Kong in our case) adding up to about 34 hrs to get home, if everything is on time. Gulp. Plenty of time to type up your diary and dream of further travels....[Later...] The flight was fine - with the usual excitement of taking and landing in cloud and swirling around cityscapes at a few hundred feet (we saw Hong Kong skyscrapers whirling below us).As we finished our ride around NZ we realised, as you always do, that there is far more to any country than you can do in a few months. Evidently the NZ autumn was arriving as we finished our bike ride, but we'd recommend not taking any less than 3 months to do a NZ bike ride.And as usual after any bike trip, you can't help contrasting the glories of the open road with the steady 9 to 5. We considered further trips, when we've saved up a bit. Oz is an obvious place for a bike ride, but what about South America (over the Andes)? the USA surely (let's do the transAm again!), but Europe north to south? Oh....
Today was a matter of getting on that plane... We got up early and set off at about 10am having chucked out lots of stuff to lighten our bags and get everything in. Our flight wasn't until 3pm but we needed to get bike boxes from the Qantas office at the airport and then do the tedious business of making the bikes fit in them (lowering saddle, removing or lowering handle bars, removing one wheel 'cos the boxes are not that long, taking the pedals off, adding just enough additional stuff to the pannier to keep the weight under 23kg (the current Qantas limit for the hold - but not enforced down to the gram since my box weight slightly over at 23.5kg I think) but not leave you with too much to take into the cabin as hand baggage. And avoiding any tools, penknives, spokes, oil cans, etc, in the hand luggage since that would likely come under the anti-terrorist (anti-tourist?) legislation. So this packing mullarky takes a while.We made it onto the plane, and I'm typing this from a height of 34000 feet over Urumqi, and at a ground speed of 472mph. Going to NZ is great fun but the international flights are somewhat length - about a full 24hr day spent in the air plus a couple of stops (Melbourne and Hong Kong in our case) adding up to about 34 hrs to get home, if everything is on time. Gulp. Plenty of time to type up your diary and dream of further travels....[Later...] The flight was fine - with the usual excitement of taking and landing in cloud and swirling around cityscapes at a few hundred feet (we saw Hong Kong skyscrapers whirling below us).As we finished our ride around NZ we realised, as you always do, that there is far more to any country than you can do in a few months. Evidently the NZ autumn was arriving as we finished our bike ride, but we'd recommend not taking any less than 3 months to do a NZ bike ride.And as usual after any bike trip, you can't help contrasting the glories of the open road with the steady 9 to 5. We considered further trips, when we've saved up a bit. Oz is an obvious place for a bike ride, but what about South America (over the Andes)? the USA surely (let's do the transAm again!), but Europe north to south? Oh....