Great Scott

Bringing your bike with you on a plane trip is not simple. First you need to acquire a bike box or case. Then you have to partially disassemble the bike. Remove the wheels, pedals and saddle and seatpost. Take off the face plate so you can wrap the handlebar around the frame. Try to get everything into the case and secure so that the less than careful baggage handlers won’t damage your precious machine.

Different airlines have different policies regarding oversized items. I’m most familiar with Air France. You need to reserve space for a bike before the trip, and you cannot do this on line, you have to call and spend some time playing computer solitaire while on hold. The agent puts in a request, and you are supposed to see the result with your reservation in a couple of days. In practice this doesn’t happen and I’ve had to call several times to actually get confirmation that the bike was good to go.

More fun awaits at the airport. When you check in, you have to pay for the bike. On AF, if the case/bike combo is under 50 lbs. it costs $150, but if it goes over it’s $225. Since my hard case weighs 30 lbs. that doesn’t leave much leeway for shoes or a helmet. You sometimes have to pay at the check in desk but then take your bike to an oversized luggage portal for check in and screening. If the stars are really aligned against you, a security person will want to open the case and completely undo your careful packing while you watch from behind a rope barrier. This happened to me once. The initial scan was suspicious, perhaps because some of the tubeless sealant residue resembled a bomb making chemical. A supervisor was called in and they prodded and pawed some more and finally declared it safe to load, but they had trouble getting everything back in and buttoned up. I begged to be allowed to jump the rope and help, and they finally relented and I was able to get things ready to fly.

When you get to your destination, you have to hope your bike followed you. If the connection is tight because a flight left late, it might not. I have written before about how my Tarmac and I went to Europe on completely different tours and were not reunited until I had been back home for 10 days. If it has arrived you will need to find the oversized baggage delivery area, which may not be close to where your regular checked bags pop onto the belt.

Give all this, it really is easier to rent, which is what I have done on all my post covid Europe trips. Some of the rentals have been ok, one was a disaster. That was an emergency last minute rental after AF sent the Tarmac AWOL, so I suppose I was lucky to have any bike at all.

On my most recent trip, I had the pleasure of riding a Scott Addict. I really liked the bike from my first ride. Sure, it was quite a bit heavier than the Tarmac, and even a bit more beefy than my 18 lb. Sampson. And while the frame was the right size it had a longer stem than I’m used to, so I had to push the saddle forward which put me in a different position over the crank.

But the bike was comfortable, with wide 32 mm tires. Wide tires on road bikes are the rage now, with lower pressures and a larger contact patch. My old bikes have frames designed for 25 mm tires at the max; anything larger rubs against the frame.

The Scott also had disc brakes and electronic shifting. The shifting I can do without; mechanical shifters and derailleurs work just fine and you don’t have to worry about the bike going all Tesla on you and losing your gears to a dead battery. But I have to admit that the disc brakes are quite an improvement, especially on long descents. Your hands don’t get tired from pulling on the levers and you don’t have to worry about the rims overheating and causing a blowout. Again, my older bikes were not designed for discs so I’m going to have to stick with rim brakes.

On top of Mont Aigoual: Downhill PR’s to follow.

The most amazing thing about the Scott was how it went downhill. I have well deserved reputation as a slow and timid rider when the road points down. But I found myself going much faster and staying close to people who normally leave me way behind when descending. Strava agrees: I set a couple of downhill PR’s, including Mont Ventoux from Bedouin, which I’ve done on 6 occasions. A couple of times I arrived at the bottom just behind my friend Kent, who normally leaves me way behind going down. My friend Jack even noticed that I was going down a lot quicker, and he has been waiting for me at the bottom for 20 years.

Downhill PR’s: Still slow but not as slow.

Wider tires and disc brakes are not in my cycling future at home unless I break down and buy a new bike. I doubt I will do that. But I don’t have any hesitation about renting the modern stuff when I travel. I think both the Tarmac and the Sampson have seen the inside of a bike box for the last time.