Breaking up the flights from Australia back home to the UK, by pedaling across the big landmass in-between, has brought a headache of logistics but somehow plans have fallen into place. We now find ourselves sat in our Sand Diego motel room eagerly waiting on a phone call from reception to let us know when UPS have delivered our parcel.
Inside the parcel will be bright orange, 27 gear, compact tandem with 20inch wheels. It’s been manufactured in the USA by Bike Friday and will be delivered just in time for L and me to hop on and start pedaling 3500 miles, west to east! One thing’s for sure, ‘The Flying Fox’ as our new tandem will from now be known, should prove to be a major upgrade from our previous Chinese crisis (of a folding 20inch wheel tandem) known as ‘Tandy’. (Check out the early blog posts).
The lady on reception with the drawn on, inch thick, purple eyebrows had been most helpful relocating us to another non-smoking room after our arrival. The new room didn’t honk of stale cigarettes and wasn’t located on the 4th floor, we settled for the 1st floor. Not quite the easy access ground floor room we’d envisaged when booking a motel opposed to a hotel, but the thought of lugging a tandem up and down one flight of outside steps is preferable to four.
The all too familiar,” what do we do now and how did we get into this mess?”.
Prior to the arrival of the all-important package, L and I had sourced one or two miscellaneous cycle related items for the trip. We’d also spoken to an enthusiastic T-mobile employee who helped us with getting a local sim card and who went further to assist with directions to the nearest supermarket. Apparently, we needed to ‘get on the trolly’. Neither of us had any idea what this meant so instead we walked.
The eagerly awaited phone call soon arrived and before we knew it, we’d spent a couple of hours unpacking and putting together The Flying Fox. Working out how to cram on and attach all of our luggage, took a tad longer. Bungees at the ready. Say hello to The Flying Fox!
The Flying Fox is made by Bike Friday an American company who specialize in small wheel collapsible bikes, purpose built in various load carrying configurations. They also happen to make a range of tandems and have kindly given us a discount because we will be raising money for charity and in exchange for social media updates.
Keen to sponsor our USA west coast to east coast 3 months tandem attempt?
LINK: https://www.justgiving.com/companyteams/foxonalead
Small print. Clause 1647: If we run out of peddling time before making it to the east coast, your generous donations will still be going to the good causes stated!)
