Fini

Our tour ended, perhaps not surprisingly, with a touch of chaos. Somehow, the post-ferry logistics for meeting up with our host (and our luggage) had been left to chance.

Standing at the curb in front of the passenger terminal in Marseille, our group watched our distracted host turn left half a block away ... never to return.

It took a couple of hours to sort things out. I had allowed myself more than five hours to catch my flight, and that turned out to be sufficient. The rest of the group, seasoned travelers all, had wisely booked flights for the following day. They were more concerned about my flight than I was. From my perspective, missing my flight would just present the next problem to solve.

The greater source of anxiety for me was not my seat on a plane; it was how to get my bicycle back home.

When you plan to fly with your bicycle, the airline advises that you contact them within 24 hours of booking your ticket, to let them know. I did not do that. I thought they just wanted me to pay the (exorbitant) bicycle fee, and there was plenty of time to give them my credit card number.

Waiting was my second mistake. My first mistake was booking a flight out of Marseille on a "regional jet."

When I did call the airline, the agent reviewed my itinerary and told me that the regional jet could not take a bicycle. Her response to every question I asked was the same: the jet could not take a bicycle. No, they could not put it on another plane, my luggage has to travel with me. [Except when they fail to transfer it to your connecting flight?] "What I am I supposed to do?" "The jet cannot take a bicycle," she repeated.

At that point, changing my flight would require a hefty change fee, plus the (higher) cost of the new ticket. To fly on a large jet, I would need to leave the following day; so, add the cost of a hotel room and food. Not to mention the 200€ fee for flying with a bicycle. Shipping it would actually be cheaper.

Before the trip, I had contacted shipbikes.com. After an uninterruptible lecture on why it would cost less to take the bike with me, I finally got a word in to explain my predicament. When I told them I needed to ship it from Marseille, they said they had no broker there and could not help me. (Their website lists France as one of the international destinations they service.)

I had better luck with bikeflights.com, eventually. Via email, they confirmed that they could help me. Trying to set up the reservation was difficult, until I realized that I had to fall back on Internet Explorer; their forms do not work in safer browsers (i.e., Chrome, Firefox).

bikeflights.com had not been my first choice, after reading comments on the web that described their process: Your shipping labels would arrive via email shortly before your shipping date. That gave me pause: How would I find a place to print the documents, overseas?

This was a nail-biter almost to the last moment. Despite repeated, somewhat panicked, email messages to bikeflights.com, they did not send my shipping documents before I boarded the ferry in Corsica. When the ferry docked the next morning, it was an immense relief to find the documents in my inbox.

Now, how would I print them?

When I reached the airport, I was lucky to be paired with a really nice taxi driver. I handed him the address for the Federal Express depot (near the airport, of course), and he agreed to wait for me, avec plaisir.

I threw myself on the mercy of FedEx. I held up my smartphone, displaying the image of the shipping label. The representative graciously had me forward the message to his email address (and printed them for me).

The next time I travel with a bicycle, I will take care to book myself on jumbo jets.

The next time I travel with a bicycle, I will call the airline within 24 hours after I book my reservation (when it might be changed without penalty).

The next time I travel with a bicycle, I will stay an extra day after a tour ends.

This trip had more than its share of rocky moments, but I still had a wonderful time.