The Box-Car Children (how to get home)

THE BOX-CAR CHILDREN

Or: the little-known trials of ending a bike trip 

Or: The Large, The Broken, and The Small

"Then just pack up your bikes and go home" sounds so simple at the end of a glorious bicycle trip, however, accomplishing this in a foreign city where you can't communicate and don't have a phone with an Italian SIM card is more like working through a 400-level calculus problem. 

When in Rome...

We tried the two bike shops within walking distance to our lodging (hopefully thus able to walk the boxes back): Mr First had one beautiful cardboard box taking up a third of his shop, but refused to engage with our lousy Italian and wouldn't let us have it. Mr Second Shop apologized profusely in rapid Italian--we could intuit his goodwill--but he didn't have any boxes. 

This box gathering was chipping away at our precious Rome Time, but we certainly weren't going to leave them behind us. To try and save a little time, I asked our helpful inn-keeper if he might phone a farther-away bicycle shop on our behalf. I explained we were looking for CARDBOARD bicycle boxes. He shared the results after his phone call: "They have! It is different type of bike bags, some German brands." Enough of a tantalizing lead to warrant getting on the bikes to investigate. 

When we arrived, I was mentally psyching myself up to spent many euro on fancy bike transport cases if need be. And Mr Farther Away Shop showed us the bike bags in question: a set of neat little panniers. Oh geez, lost in translation indeed! 

But thank the Roman God of two wheels, there was a conglomeration of old bike boxes in the recycling pile! 

We found one (1) box that was broken, one (1) box that was colossally too large and one (1) box that was too small. Goldibox and the three bears, was it? We'll just see what some cardboard arts and crafts can do. 

Now we had three unwieldy cardboard items and two bicycles to schlepp across Rome. Ride the bikes back, then return walking for the boxes? Such a use of time. Load the whole mass onto public transport? Crowded and nigh impossible. Uber? We would be scorned by drivers. 

Could we make a two-person parade? We stuffed the boxes all inside the giant one, I took my bike in my right hand, Matthew his bike in his left hand, and with our spare hands we lifted the boxes in the middle between us. We took a couple tentative steps. 

Does a honeymoon include a test? 

Can a marriage withstand the coordination and communication necessary to navigate busy Rome sidewalks, crosswalks and curbs while maneuvering many awkward items? HELL YES IT CAN. Our hands and shoulders ached from it and we had to "scusi! scusi!" frequently and take lots of breaks, but we successfully got the maddening lot back to our lodging. My favorite was crossing the streets; our giant box wider and taller than most cars, and I just barrelled into the street without a pause. "Be careful babe!" said Matthew from the caboose. "Oh they are stopping whether they like it or not!" I called from the front. 

Back to the 400-level calculus problem. A single main problem (we need boxes) unfolds into multiple sub-problems. For instance, the evening after the Great Roman Schlepp, we came out to discover our hard-won boxes had disappeared. Gah!! A new problem! We found them outside the gate by the dumpster, thankfully. Which became yet another problem: the gate closed behind us and our key was non-functional in the lock. Sometimes little daily things in a foreign place, like a sticky key, are so defeating.

Someone with better keymanship arrived and got us inside again. 

Arts n Crafts Build-a-Box was a fun project, made possible by my pocket knife and a roll of packing tape from your local grocer, although it was time that could have been spent waiting in an hours-long line to get in Saint Peter's Basilica. To be sacrilegious and frank, I was happier with the boxes. My tolerance for crowds has evaporated.

I can say that when you approach carrying two enormous and slightly misshapen boxes, that Uber drivers, bus drivers, airline check-in personnel, and baggage handlers will NOT look pleased to see you coming. 

Bicycle trips are fun, wild, freeing, exciting, but the price-of-admission of getting your bikes to and from is STEEP. We've paid it the past couple days. We navigated an enormous airport with hundreds of flashing ticket counters (an airport that is inconveniently distant from city center), repacked everything to meet weight restrictions (we did this the day before for an airport pre-visit to access baggage scales), pleaded with grumpy and insulted Uber drivers to try and fit the boxes, and witnessed my bike box fall off a baggage trolley with a crash so fierce I cringe now to reflect on it.

We've made a number of decisions that ended up being poor, but that we made with the knowledge we had at the time. The specifics of travel woes bore anyone who's woes they aren't, so I'll spare you. But we are frayed and exhausted and ready to understand how things work again in our own system. 

(Post-script: for future trips we will get a SIM card for the country, contact bike shops ahead to have them save proper boxes for us, or somehow fly out of one of the two airports in Switzerland that provide complimentary bike FOR YOU).