Pacific Coast Ride - some planning questions

[mgarrigan]

Hello!

My friend and I are planning to do a bike tour of the pacific coast.  I have already bought the maps from the adventure cycling association.  This will be the first tour for both of us.  We're planning to fly out of PGH at the end of Sept. and take the whole month of October to tour.  

I have a few questions however.  The big one is this -any recomendations on how and where to ship our bikes/equipment?  The tour starts in Vancouver, BC - so we are planning to fly there.  However, we don't know anyone to ship our stuff too - should we find a post office to ship it to?


Like I said, this is the first time for us so we have a lot of planning to do.

ANY recomendations, experiences, advice would be more than welcome.

i can't tell you how excited i am.  This is our graudation present to ourselves!

We will both be riding Surly CrossChecks.  

thanks for any help!

[TRobertson]

Hi,

In the past, we have suggested a couple of different things for folks that want to send their bikes to their starting point ahead of time. One is to get in touch with one of the bike shops on the map, and send it there. If doing this, most folks go ahead and get the bike shop to put their bike together (generally around $25 per bike) so that they are ready to go when they pick them up. The other suggestion is to go ahead and make hotel, hostel or campground reservations for when you are arriving, then ask to ship the bikes there. They can then hold the bikes for you, and they should be there waiting for you when you arrive.

Hope that this helps. Good luck with your planning.

Tom Robertson
routes and mapping
Adventure Cycling Association

 

[jes]

is this mike garrigan?  man, pittsburgh is so small.  it's jes friedrichs.  matt and are doing the pacific coast trip starting in june.  we are flying to vancouver and then flying back from san francisco.  we are planning on just packing our bikes and checking them onto the plane. there is plenty of advice on how to do this on the adventure cycling website and others.  

we should talk more!  email me at jxf243@hotmail.com.  we have gotten lots of helpful advice thus far.  

rock on!

j