We spent the last couple of days packing our bags and bike. It is an interesting experience to try to jam 3 weeks worth of stuff into two small panniers. I’m always surprised when everything seems to fit.

Taking the bike apart and fitting it into two bike boxes is a real-life 3D Tetris experience. This year we are using two boxes I retrieved by dumpster diving near a local bike shop. One is a bit small and we were barely able to fit the front half of our bike in it. The bike has to be broken down into a multitude of smaller pieces to fit in the box. In previous years we’ve nearly lost some of these pieces when the boxes failed during their ride on the airplane with us. So this year I attempted a different strategy. I rigged nylon straps that hopefully will hold the box together. We will see how that turns out….

Checking in at the airport in Salt Lake was a little bit more work this time. The people who were security checking the bike boxes decided they needed to take every single thing out. The bike pretty much only fit if everything was packed in the right order, and as they attempted to put things back in they didn’t quite discover the right order. By the time they repacked one of the boxes it was bulging heavily on the sides. When they got ready to put the straps back on they finally caved and let me help.

Right now I am writing this sitting in Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Neither of us slept very well in the plane, but now we’re trying to stay awake. In about an hour we board our plane to Gothenburg Sweden. We land around 5:00 p.m., so we just made reservations at an Airbnb close to the airport. Our goal will be to land, put our bike together, and ride to our Airbnb before we fall asleep…. Also, while sitting in the airport, I started planning the first leg of our route along the coast of southwestern Sweden. Some might argue I am a bit late planning details such as this. They would probably win that argument.

We are so excited to start riding. If we can just stay awake.