My journey from San Francisco to Paris started at 6am when my wife drove me to the airport for my 8am flight to Newark, New Jersey.
I have a bike that uncouples and fits into a suitcase. Here is the bike and the suitcase.
Here are the 5 main parts of the bike.
Here is the bike in the box.
Since the bike is the only thing that fits in the case I packed a second suitcase with the racks, bar bag, panniers, and everything else I was taking for my trip. I knew that everything wouldn't fit into the suitcase (the panniers are quite bulky), so I packed two of the panniers full of stuff and used them for carry-on luggage. My plan when I arrived was to assemble the bike, unpack the suitcase, load everything onto the bike, put the empty cases in left luggage at the hotel, and ride off.
I got a bit of a shock when I checked in and placed my cases on the scale at the airline counter. The bike case came in at a quarter pound over 50. Nothing was said about it (the limit is 50 pounds) but it puzzled me that my bike case weighed that much since it only held the bike. Is it possible that my bike is that heavy? I have since weighed it, with the racks, on my bathroom scale and it appears to come in at about 30 - 35 pounds. The case can't weigh more than 5 pounds. The mystery continues.
The flight to Newark was uneventful except that the plane was new and had only two seats per row and they served a meal! I had a 2 hour layover in a very nice section of the airport. The next leg of the flight was also in a new plane whose entertainment system offered over 300 movies! The flights were long but not all that bad.
My arrival in Charles de Gaulle airport, northeast of Paris, at 7:45am Monday (10:45 pm my time) was uneventful and I cleared customs without a wait. It took some time to figure out which airport bus to take to the hotel that I had reserved as this hotel chain had two hotels near the airport. After about an hour of standing around and attempting to board two different busses, I found the one that took me to the Suitehotel in Paris Nord 2.
I had reserved a room on-line and gotten an advanced purchase price break. It was a nice hotel in an office park area. The only problem was that the elevators where small and I had a hard time getting all my stuff into them.
Once in the room, I started assembling the bike. This took about two hours. I wanted to do a test ride so I asked at the front desk if there was a place nearby where I could buy groceries. While the clerk spoke good English, she wasn't from the area and couldn't help me. Someone with more local knowledge provided her details that she relayed to me. I took off down the road and discovered that the area I was in was a kind of exposition area that had lots of hotels, some industrial buildings, a few restaurants, but no food stores. Also, the roads had no shoulder at all and always merged into busy roundabouts.
I returned to the hotel and reported my findings. Eventually, someone suggested that I ride into Roissy (wah-say), the nearest town. My route there involved negotiating through a major road intersection that was under construction. I managed to get past it without incident but I did create a bit of a back-up for a few hundred meters.
Roissy is a quaint little town that has grown due to its proximity to the new airport. The older section had 2 food stores that provided me with alcohol for my stove, pasta, cheese, olive oil, a few vegetables, and other odds and ends I wanted to get before I left.
By the time I rode back, it was the afternoon and I wanted to eat something. I set-up my stove, had pasta, vegetables, a bit of homemade sauce, and cheese. I cleaned up and went to bed.