Sunday June 16th - a beautiful winters day in Brisbane
Packing the bikes into boxes
Checking the Karrimor Panniers
Today we finish packing our bikes in boxes, stuff our clothes into the ancient Karrimoor panniers, reweigh everything, chuck stuff out, then put a pair of panniers each into our Louis Vuitton suitcases. A limo from Etihad takes us to the airport where we take the 12.45pm to Paris via Singapore and Abu Dhabi and arrive in Paris Monday morning at 7.30am ready to ride off into the sunset.
It took a full day yesterday for Ian to pull apart the bikes and and pack them into boxes. They fitted neatly into standard bike boxes with room to pile junk on top - pedals, seats and handlebars that all have to be removed, and helmets, front panniers, food boxes (really a cheap cosmetics bag). I have packed and unpacked my two rear panniers six times already, each time tossing a few items back into the wardrobe to lighten the load. The Karrimor rear panniers are 33 years old - we first bought them in London from the FW Evans bike shop where our custom made state of the art titanium bike frames were made for our for a 5 month, 9,000k tour of Europe in 1980.
A pair of panniers contain roughly Clothes 3.5kg
Shoes .5kg
Computer 1.2kg
Toiletries 1.8kg
Panniers 2kg
It's supposed to weigh 9kg - note expensive Louis Vuitton suitcases
Do I look like a bike box??
Food 2kg
Maps etc 1kg
TOTAL 12kg
Time to say goodbye