You have to pad the parts of the bike against rattling around and scraping or denting each other, as

In this week's episode, for the first time in 23 seasons (several of which have included visits to places where mosques are major tourist attractions), The Amazing Race visited a mosque. There's a common misperception that non-Muslims aren't allowed in mosques, but with the exception of the holy (to Muslims) cities of Mecca and Medina, that's generally not true. I have yet to visit a mosque where respectful non-Muslim visitors weren't welcome. (Unlike at many Mormon and some Hindu, Parsi, and other places of worship.)
Afghan-American cousins Jamal and Leo finished first in this episode, rent a car rental locations enterprise and emphasized how much "at home" they felt in Abu Dhabi. That might seem strange. They both say they speak only "a little" Arabic (at the mosque, they say their prayers in Farsi), and neither of them is of Arabian ethnicity rent a car rental locations enterprise or ancestry. But it makes more sense when you realize that Abu Dhabi, like most of the other apartheid monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula, isn't predominantly an Arabian rent a car rental locations enterprise country by any demographic measure. Only about 20% of the population are citizens, and most of the "foreign" residents are non-Arabs, predominantly from South Asia. There's a particular sort of cosmopolitanism to a place like Abu Dhabi, but only in part is it "Arab".
In the real world, travellers are much more likely to use bicycles (or to consider doing so) than to ride in racing cars around an actual Formula One course , as the racers did this week in Abu Dhabi. rent a car rental locations enterprise In Montr al, for what it's worth, you can ride your bicycle around such a track, as I did last summer. The Formula One racecourse in Montr al is open to bicyclists for most of the year as a public velodrome, whenever it isn't in use for motorized racing.
In recent columns, I've talked generally about travel by bicycle and how to buy a touring bicycle . In response to comments, I've added some notes on a few specific models rent a car rental locations enterprise of new touring bikes to consider.
This week, I'll look at some of the bicycling issues -- including those related to transporting your own bicycle or procuring a bicycle locally to use while you are abroad, and choosing bicycles and components suitable for use while abroad -- that are specific to international travel.
If you are only using a bike for local sightseeing, it usually makes the most sense to rent one locally. Almost anywhere you would want a bike for local use, you can find some sort of bike for rent. For short distances, it isn't necessary (and may not even be desirable, in light of the risk of theft) to have a high-quality bike or one that fits you perfectly. If you rent a bike, it will probably be of a locally-common rent a car rental locations enterprise type, which is advantageous if it breaks down. I haven't rent a car rental locations enterprise yet done a long-distance overseas bike tour, but I've rented bikes in many countries for local sightseeing.
Fit and reliability become more important, and renting a bicycle locally is less likely to be the best choice, if you want to travel longer distances by bicycle. It can be difficult or impossible to find a quality bicycle for rent, or one that fits you well. Unless you have a referral to a bike rental service from a knowledgeable and trusted friend, rent a car rental locations enterprise you may not be able to tell in advance what condition rent a car rental locations enterprise the bikes available for rent will be in, much less whether it will be possible to get them to fit you adequately. Because bicycle rent a car rental locations enterprise rental is mostly a local business, it's much less common to be able to arrange to rent a bike in one place, and return it to another, rent a car rental locations enterprise than to do the same with a rental car.
For long-distance bicycle travel, except as part of a supported tour for which the tour operator provides the bicycles along with their other services, you're more likely rent a car rental locations enterprise to need to find a way either to get your own bicycle to the starting point of your trip (and back again, unless you plan to sell or abandon it at the end of your ride), or buy a bike locally to use for your tour.
This is essentially the cycling counterpart to the common practice of buying a second-hand motor vehicle for a road trip across North America or Australia, and selling it at the end of your trip. If you are both savvy and lucky, you might get a bike cheaply enough (even counting the cost of modifications, upgrades, and repairs), and recover enough of the price when you sell it, for your net outlay to be less than the cost of shipping a bike there and back home again.
Buying a bike on arrival is most likely to work out if (1) you have relatively "standard" proportions; (2) you are relatively tolerant of less than optimal bicycle sizing, fit, and component choices; and (3) you are spending rent a car rental locations enterprise some time at the start of your trip, before you plan to start riding, in a place where you have confirmed in advance (through that local Friend I just mentioned, rent a car rental locations enterprise or perhaps through a local bicycle touring rent a car rental locations enterprise club or the like) that suitable bikes, in suitable sizes (are you much larger or smaller than most people and bikes in the place where you are going?) are likely to be available for an acceptable price.
Ask locals where used bikes for sale are advertised: Craigslist in the USA, Gumtree in the UK, mailing lists and bulletin boards of cycle touring organizations like CTC in the UK or ACA in the USA , etc. Check sample prices and availability in advance, online and/or rent a car rental locations enterprise by phoning used-bike dealers.
Keep in mind that asking prices may be negotiable but that the condition rent a car rental locations enterprise of used bikes may be worse than you expect from advertisements that depict them in the most favorable light. The best prices may be for bikes that are available only on a cash-and-carry basis and have to be picked up in out-of-the-way places that are far from any city and hard to get to without rent a car rental locations enterprise a car.
Expect it to take some time -- longer than it would at home, where you know where and how to look -- to locate the right bike for sale at the right price, and to configure it and get all the necessary accessories. (Bring as many of these with you as you conveniently can.)
The ideal seller is someone who has just finished their own bicycle rent a car rental locations enterprise trip in the opposite direction, and is selling a completely equipped and "broken-in" touring bike rather than paying to take it home with them or on the next leg of their journey. You can't count on finding a seller like this, but it's not unusual to see ads in the hostels or on Craigslist in gateway cities like San Francisco from foreign visitors who are selling their bikes at the end of North American journeys, before flying on (without their bikes) to Australia, Asia, Latin America, or Europe. Someone like this is likely rent a car rental locations enterprise to sell you a bike that you can be ready to ride almost immediately, and may include racks, panniers, tools, spares, etc. for very little, if anything, more than the price of the bare bike.
Most people rent a car rental locations enterprise who already have a touring rent a car rental locations enterprise bike they like would prefer to have it with them wherever they ride (unless local road conditions require a different bike, such as one with wider, softer tires for unpaved roads). Unfortunately, taking your bike by plane with you has gotten much more complicated and often much more expensive than it used to be. Worst of all, it has become impossible to predict how much that will cost.
Every airline has different rules and fees for transporting bicycles. Check directly with each airline for current rules and fees. Because these change often, all third-party summaries and sources of information about different airlines' rules and fees for transporting bicycles are unreliable, and many authoritative-looking ones are wrong. Don't rely on what someone else says they paid. Not only may the rules and/or fees have changed recently, but they can vary, even on the same airline, depending on the route, the direction of travel (like fares, fees can be different in opposite directions), and the fare paid.
Baggage fees -- including fees for excess, oversized, or overweight items -- are an increasingly important profit rent a car rental locations enterprise center for airlines, which are trying as hard as they can to make sure that they charge each passenger as much as they are willing to pay for their luggage, and no less. Airline rent a car rental locations enterprise rules and fees for carriage of bicycles are complex and ambiguous, especially where a single journey involves connecting flights operated by multiple airlines, or a codeshare flight ticketed with one airline's flight number but operated by another.
Your interpretation of the tariff may not be same as that of the airline staff at the check-in counter. If you don't pay what they demand, you and/or your bike won't be transported. Once you have handed over cash or signed a charge authorization for the baggage fee, you have little chance of ever getting it back.
The worst case -- for which you have to be prepared rent a car rental locations enterprise -- is to be hit up for a substantial unexpected surcharge (US$200 would not be unusual, especially for an intercontinental flight, and it could be even more) when you go to check your bicycle in for your return flight.
In 1985, when I moved from Boston to San Francisco, I wheeled my bicycle up to the check-in counter at Logan Airport, turned the handlebars, and handed it over to People Express. At SFO, I straightened the handlebars and wheeled it away from the oversized baggage claim office. I think I paid a handling fee of US$5.
Some airlines, on some routes, still accept unboxed bicycles rent a car rental locations enterprise like this. Others only require bikes to be wrapped in giant plastic bags, which they provide. Most, however, require bikes to be packed in boxes of some specified maximum size, which size varies from airline to airline.
Boxing a bike to take on a plane is a nuisance at best, and requires some skill. How much you have to disassemble the bike varies with the size and style of the frame, size of the wheels, style and size of the racks and other protruding accessories, and size of the box.
You have to pad the parts of the bike against rattling around and scraping or denting each other, as well as against getting crushed if the box is piled on its side under other luggage. Because they contain large metal tubes that