Does anyone bring their bicycle with them on their travels?

Hi
I had a Montague foldable bike in Paris, they are normal bikes of normal size when unfolded (mine has 28’ wheelroad they also have mountain versions but I didn’t try so far.
Some have turn the city version to race road bikes by changing a few elements (saddle, handlebar, etc).
Of course when folded they are not Brompton sized but I managed to fit them on a daily basis in small electric car trunks, trbasis elevator, etc.
Im thinking at bringing mine in Asia to move around with me.
Maybe they would fit your need ?

I have an update. I just flew from Los Angeles, California to Taipei to Saigon to Da Nang. I ended up purchasing the Gavilán BFF case that @Fussen taught me about to pack my bike. In short, it has all worked out pretty well. I just went for a round trip bike ride from Hoi An to Da Nang this morning.

My case weighs 40 lbs (18 kg) and contains: my bike, helmet, shoes, road kit, pedal wrench, towel, latex gloves, two water bottles, a bike pump, and lights. Although the case is expensive, I haven’t had to paid any extra baggage fees to check it in.

I’m not very knowledgable about bikes at all. It did take me a couple of hours to disassemble it and reassemble it. I also had to make some rear derailleur adjustments (I still do but the settings seem to be ok for now). I’m learning how to do that using YouTube.

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Awesome thread.
I’ve been missing my bike. And he’s been missing me!
The suitcase bike looks very practical. Probably need to get the hang of assembling it.

I have bought a bike through local classifieds as it was cheaper than renting and afforded a better quality and lighter bike than most places with daily rentals have. However, it’s not practical for shorter term stays.

A folding bike would not be fun on longer rides, even if pretty practical also. Plus I’m tall and feel precarious on them!

Does anyone know if the (S&S?) coupled bike can go longer distances? What is that like, re: comfort & stability?
Also, what to do with the case when using the bike? I guess you can only use it from a ‘home base’

Eager to hear more bike while traveling stories/solutions.

I have a 56cm road bike that I’m highly considering taking with me to Vietnam and China. My feeling is it will be a pain to travel with, but I really need to take my bike with me for training purposes. It’s nice to hear @haxpor had a pretty good experience using his bike bag. And good info all around.

This thread is about bikes in general. But, I want to know: does anyone have experience traveling with a road bike plus bike gear like helmet, shoes, bottles, etc. for training purposes? (should I start another thread?)

I brought my road-bike to Ho Chi Minh via bag, see here, and stayed there for a month.

When I got there at the airport, I assembled the bike back together. The bag requires me to take off both wheels. Thus it takes very short amount of time before I’m ready to hit the road.

When I’m ready, I fold the bike-bag, and attach it firmly to my backpack bag. My plan was not to involve any public transportation, I will go on my own.

And yes, I cycle every day back and forth between co-working space and the place I stay. It’s ~12 km/day.

As a fairly hardcore mountain biker, I think it’s too much hassle travelling with it. And indeed danger (bent frames, anyone?). I’d never heard of S&S before, looks cool, and easier to ship, still a hassle having a case no matter if it’s a bit more compact.

Currently I have a base in France and keep my bikes here, I plan to add another base soon, and another bike. Of course this means that when I’m not in these places I can’t ride or have to make do with buying cheap clunkers as I don’t see the point in renting for just an odd day. http://spinlister.com seems good, but it’s expensive for regular use.

So at least some of the time I get to have great rides, plus I can travel out from around the bases (although the hassle may be no improvement, at least one can recoup without worry).

There’s plenty of fab adventure destinations where you can get great quality rentals, but still doing that even more than a few times a year (hmm, expensive) is just not the same as having your own bike and leaving it somewhere you can return to.

It’d be too awesome to tour by bike, but one would loose an enormous amount of flexibility which for me goes against being a digital nomad—not to be constrained, even by one’s passions…

I travel with a bike. It uses S&S couplers to disassemble.

The breakdown and assembly each take about an hour, so I tend to keep the bike in its suitcase unless I’m in a city for at least a week.

I would also love carrying my mountain bike to places and I miss it during my travels . If I could carry it would have been great and MTB is a passion for me .

Just an update for anyone who is curious… my wife and I have just purchased Bromptons. They are small enough to be standard checked baggage, and often can be carried through airport security and gate-checked or even carried on the plane.

We’ll be experimenting with incorporating them into our travels.

If you have the cash to outlay for a great frame, Surly makes a “World Troller” frame that can be broke down into two parts. This makes it easier to fit under the sizes for “oversize” checked luggage. To save some cash, since it’s a 26" wheel size, and basically compatible with most mountain bike parts, you could buy a used early 2000 MTB with decent components and transfer them to the frame.

http://surlybikes.com/bikes/world_troller

In big cities I think it’s pretty easy to buy and sell bikes. I’ve only done it once, in Chiang Mai, but there I looked at renting and realised for three months it cost the same just to buy a cheap bike. So I did that and then sold it on a Facebook group before I left. If I did it again I would buy the bike second hand too.

There are also some cities where the local government want you people to hire bikes just to reduce congestion. I know you can do that in London, the so called “Borris Bikes”, and here in Mexico City it’s around $30 to hire a bike for a whole year, they have parking lots for them so you just put in your pin and collect a bike. You can then leave it anywhere in the city where there’s a station.

Of course these bikes won’t be as nice as your own bike, but maybe worth trying while you still have your other bike.

Also, I’m on strava, just for running, I’ll DM you my email address

In my short experience so far, it is a PITA to transport a bike and far easier to actually ride it! While I intend to tour and am in a different situation to you, I had similar experiences when flying with my old bike for holiday MTBing.

A couple of things to consider:

While the bike can be disassembled to fit in train luggage racks it can mean paying an extra oversize fee (Russia) or, in the case of buses, bribing someone to let you put it there (China/Russia border crossing). In the worst case you will have to send it separately and wait around for it to arrive (Beijing to Manzhouli).

Your nicely-tuned bike might suffer somewhat from repeated disassembly and/or rough handling. So allow some time/money for retuning/repairs.

At the other end of your trip you will have a large/heavy unrideable item which potentially needs to be reassembled in some dark corner at some unsavoury hour or transported by someone with a vehicle large enough to accommodate it (if they won’t let you on the train with it - Beijing Airport). Also consider that some cities aren’t exactly bike friendly. So for both of those reasons I’d try to arrive during daylight hours if you plan to ride your steed to your accommodation.

Of course if you’re not moving countries every month then these small hassles become more bearable.

We’ve considered traveling with Bromptons. They’ll fit in the overhead bins on most planes, and if not, they can easily be checked without having to deal with the hassle of a full-size bike box.

my friends do. it’s expensive and a pain in the ass but worth it to them.

Not sure how custom and high quality your bicycles are but in most places you can rent a variety of bicycles.

From street cycles to fixies. They’re rentable in most places.

I’m very curious about this, and keen to hear from anyone who has experience.

Both my wife and I were active cyclists before we started traveling full-time. Having our own bikes is something we miss terribly when on the road, but we haven’t been able to bring ourselves to deal with the hassle of transporting the bikes when we move countries.

Cycling is also rather good for generating nice photos:

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etc.