pozo_izquierdo
Feb 24th, 2006, 4:00 pm
Hi all,
As time has passed we have learned new things about motorcycle shipping to US. Last time I wrote to this forum we were still choosing between various landing points and San Francisco was becoming our favorite.
Well, then we learned that the shipping company has stopped bike transports to the US altogether about two years ago. The reason was the all the time more strict security regulations, immense bureaucracy and all that sort of things. They only ship bikes to and from Canada.
OK, we changed our plans to the direction that some board members already advised us to do in the first place and not to ride through the extremely hot southern states. Arrival to Calgary and departure from Toronto. This is our current plan.
However, just to make sure things are not that simple, we also learned that we just simply don’t ride our bikes to the airport few hours prior to the scheduled departure time and hop on the same plane. We have to leave the bikes to the airport cargo center 48 hours before the departure time, battery disconnected and gas tank containing max 1 gallon of gas. Okay, to disconnect the battery and suck out extra gas from the tank is no big deal – but 48 hours before the departure! We also found out that this is a strict deadline (for security reasons) , if we miss that, the bike loading will be postponed to the next flight…
As we don’t have all the time in the world at our disposal we have to try to try to work out something. At this time our overall schedule ( for the bike flights) looks as follows: Arrival to Calgary Aug. 16th at 09:10, departure from Toronto Sept 5th at 18:30.
Due to the 48 hour rule we will be likely to arrive to Calgary about 1 – 1, 5 before the bikes as it makes no sense for us to sit and wait in Frankfurt in order to get to the same flight with the bikes. After handing over the bikes to cargo center we can jump on the next low fare airline and fly to Calgary and wait for our bikes there. All suggestions on how to kill 1- 2 days in Calgary are appreciated…;-)
On our way out from Toronto we have a bit better possibility to spend the mandatory 48 hours as I have some friends in Northwest Ohio area and we can visit them and then fly out from Toledo or Detroit ourselves, only the bikes leaving from Toronto.
As far as the route from Calgary to Braselton I have been doing some preliminary route planning first by reading route descriptions on this forum and I also have been assisted by Nathan Coe who sent me a set of detailed maps he had printed out from his map software.
I have been using Garmin Map Source City Navigator North America v.7 but to my surprise the maps are not very detailed at all. ( Maybe due to the fact that my BMW Navi II is the Euro version…) This also explains why on some routes I have no smaller roads visible at all…
I have attached our preliminary route plan (the Excel picture in a Word document) for the kind board members to comment. Nathan already helped me a lot with suggestions on the West Glacier and Yellowstone national parks.
He also guided us to the famous Dragon Tail route. However, there might still be a lot worth seeing between Sturgis SD and Braselton GA. As you can see our daily ride distances are not challenging at all. We have left some slack here and there as we don’t know if something worth seeing or experiencing would pop up.
The named places on the routes generally have no particular meaning to us, they just happen to be on a convenient distance from the previous map point. If you locals see that my route selection does not make sense, please feel free to suggest alternatives.
I will attach the map pictures to separate posts.
We are also open for any group ride suggestions in case you feel that you could bear two foreigners riding with you for a day or two.
Thanks in advance for your comments or questions.
As time has passed we have learned new things about motorcycle shipping to US. Last time I wrote to this forum we were still choosing between various landing points and San Francisco was becoming our favorite.
Well, then we learned that the shipping company has stopped bike transports to the US altogether about two years ago. The reason was the all the time more strict security regulations, immense bureaucracy and all that sort of things. They only ship bikes to and from Canada.
OK, we changed our plans to the direction that some board members already advised us to do in the first place and not to ride through the extremely hot southern states. Arrival to Calgary and departure from Toronto. This is our current plan.
However, just to make sure things are not that simple, we also learned that we just simply don’t ride our bikes to the airport few hours prior to the scheduled departure time and hop on the same plane. We have to leave the bikes to the airport cargo center 48 hours before the departure time, battery disconnected and gas tank containing max 1 gallon of gas. Okay, to disconnect the battery and suck out extra gas from the tank is no big deal – but 48 hours before the departure! We also found out that this is a strict deadline (for security reasons) , if we miss that, the bike loading will be postponed to the next flight…
As we don’t have all the time in the world at our disposal we have to try to try to work out something. At this time our overall schedule ( for the bike flights) looks as follows: Arrival to Calgary Aug. 16th at 09:10, departure from Toronto Sept 5th at 18:30.
Due to the 48 hour rule we will be likely to arrive to Calgary about 1 – 1, 5 before the bikes as it makes no sense for us to sit and wait in Frankfurt in order to get to the same flight with the bikes. After handing over the bikes to cargo center we can jump on the next low fare airline and fly to Calgary and wait for our bikes there. All suggestions on how to kill 1- 2 days in Calgary are appreciated…;-)
On our way out from Toronto we have a bit better possibility to spend the mandatory 48 hours as I have some friends in Northwest Ohio area and we can visit them and then fly out from Toledo or Detroit ourselves, only the bikes leaving from Toronto.
As far as the route from Calgary to Braselton I have been doing some preliminary route planning first by reading route descriptions on this forum and I also have been assisted by Nathan Coe who sent me a set of detailed maps he had printed out from his map software.
I have been using Garmin Map Source City Navigator North America v.7 but to my surprise the maps are not very detailed at all. ( Maybe due to the fact that my BMW Navi II is the Euro version…) This also explains why on some routes I have no smaller roads visible at all…
I have attached our preliminary route plan (the Excel picture in a Word document) for the kind board members to comment. Nathan already helped me a lot with suggestions on the West Glacier and Yellowstone national parks.
He also guided us to the famous Dragon Tail route. However, there might still be a lot worth seeing between Sturgis SD and Braselton GA. As you can see our daily ride distances are not challenging at all. We have left some slack here and there as we don’t know if something worth seeing or experiencing would pop up.
The named places on the routes generally have no particular meaning to us, they just happen to be on a convenient distance from the previous map point. If you locals see that my route selection does not make sense, please feel free to suggest alternatives.
I will attach the map pictures to separate posts.
We are also open for any group ride suggestions in case you feel that you could bear two foreigners riding with you for a day or two.
Thanks in advance for your comments or questions.