Ironing out the details [travel]

[rebeccmeister]

As expected, travel is eating my brain these days.

I got train tickets booked for traveling to/from Frankfurt out to Freiburg(Breisgau), where the international social insect meeting will be taking place in August. Now the main remaining piece is to figure out where to stay overnight in Frankfurt; most likely I'll default to a youth hostel there. I'm really hoping to manage with just carry-on luggage for that trip, which will be a squeeze but seems possible.

I also ordered a few bits and bobs for Princess TinyBike, in the event that the Princess winds up being the vehicle of choice for biking up to Montreal with annikusrex in June. That will all partly depend on whether or not a wheelbuilder in New Hampshire can finish building a new front wheel for the Princess. When I tried riding PTB in April, the generator hub was stiff and made such terrible squealing noises that I hopped off and walked. I'd thought the hub was a Schmidt hub, and sent it off to a bike shop for warrantee replacement, but learned I was mistaken. The new hub *will* be a Schmidt hub; the hubs on Frodo and Froinlavin have held up far better than the one on PTB.

There are two potential conveniences of AKW riding PTB: she has ridden PTB before and knows how the bike handles already, and since PTB is a folding bike we have fewer question marks about the logistics of getting a bicycle back to Albany from Montreal (so far there's no information from Amtrak to indicate the possibility of boxing a bike for the return trip, so we have to assume we might have to find a bike shop to ship the bikes).

I just contacted some key people in Arizona to let them know I'll be in Tucson in August. It's going to be interesting to see how expensive that trip gets, with what's happening with gasoline prices.

And I just bought plane tickets for a weekend expedition out to Chicago in September to row a half-marathon with some of my rowing teammates.

Bike commuting keeps me in good practice with folding myself up and transporting myself somewhere else, I suppose.

Comments

[annikusrex]

I don't think we can even check luggage back to Montreal; you think PTB will work as carry-on?

[annikusrex]

err, back to Albany.

[rebeccmeister]

Yes, PTB can work as carry-on, amazingly!

[annikusrex]

So just very minimize my other stuff, yes?

[rebeccmeister]

Yes, mostly! We will camp enroute and it may be helpful to have rain gear. We can make some decisions on particulars before we depart from Albany.

[ivy]

Yay half marathon! I hope all your travels go well.

[rebeccmeister]

Thank you! We are pretty excited about the half marathon, although I'm concerned about figuring out boats and oars...