Here's the exciting sequel to the "Taking a Tandem to the Pyrenees" story. First, we did not in fact take the tandem. Susan broke her ankle a couple of months before the trip, and wasn't in good enough shape to do the whole ride. But she did come along and rented a car, and we took two singles. So we did not have the face off at the ticket counter concerning the tandem as I had anticipated. We did, however, have an interesting goaround with the singles. Susan wanted hers boxed, which immediately turned it into oversized baggage for which they charged $60. I preferred to ship mine au naturel, doing the minimum of turning the handlebars and taking the pedals off. Nonetheless, I was confronted with staunch opposition from the airline personnel. I reached the second rung of the chain of command almost immediately. She insisted that no one no way no how had ever taken a naked bicycle. After quoting chapter and verse from the Delta web site, I ascended to level #3, who informed me he didn't care what the web site said, that wasn't the way they did it at Logan. So after much grumbling, I started putting my bike in a box. Just about the time I had finished, airline honcho #3, who had meanwhile actually consulted the web site, came back and said I was right, it didn't need a box. So I had the pleasure of taking it out of the box, and life was sweet again.
Now the reason Susan wanted a box was to protect the bike from damage. When we picked up our luggage, the box arrived upside down, which in itself was not a good sign. Taking the bike out, we observed that the rear wheel had four broken spokes, the hanger was bent, there were multiple contusions, it looked like Godzilla has done a little two-step on it. So much for protection. My bike, which was more of the disposable variety anyway, came through unscathed (of course, with my bike it was hard to tell).
Fortunately, we had a couple of days before the trip actually started, most of which we spent in the local bike shop. While Susan's bike was in intensive care, mine kept breaking spokes and getting flat tires. My touring bike is the last of the fleet that still has 27" wheels and Schrader valves. This I thought was a good thing, but found out to my chagrin that these did not seem to exist anymore. So when I was down to my last spare tube, I opted to buy a raft of Presta tubes. I had one of those grommets that are supposed to turn a Schrader hole in the rim into Presta, but it was impossible to install. So I put a new rim strip on, stuffed a Presta tube in, and hoped for the best.
Now, of course, my devious mind being what it is, I figured, rental car was a synonym for "personal sag wagon." But instead of following me closely and seeing to my every need, Mrs. D. was off finding the steepest knarliest dirt roads wide enough for the little Renault (trip slogan was "it's a rental car"), usually accompanied by sidekicks who should have known better.
The trip itself was marred only by the fact that it rained nearly every day, and I had a cold for most of it. Rain-man Mike Hanauer was on the trip, so that may explain the weather. Given the variety of weather conditions we experienced, mere rain was actually at the top of the scale, followed by cold rain, followed by windswept rain, followed by cold windswept rain, followed by hail. Yes, we had it all. On the hail day, most of the troops had to be sagged. I got an early start and managed to do just a little hail, but on several other days got rained on all day, when the later starters only experienced intermittent rain. I think from all this I can conclude most emphatically that there's no truth to the saying that "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."
But there is a happy ending to the story. By a strange turn of events, both members of one of the tandem teams (there were three), were unable to ride on the last day of the tour. This presented somewhat of a problem, as the sag van we had could not fit a tandem. By this time Susan had ridden her single some, without adverse effects. So, we immediately volunteered to ride the tandem while they drove the car. It was an old Santana, even rattier than ours, but with good brakes and gears to climb walls with, so we had a great time. Great way to end the trip.
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