Bike Transport

Andreas Paepcke

August 22, 2024

Time again to ship the bike. Most of you know: it's going to Chicago, where Diane and I will fly tomorrow. A few days with her family, then I am off. Roughly: Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and back through Utah, or such.

The transport terminal is in Milpitas; a vast sea of asphalt, with truck loading bays on either side. 18-wheelers can comfortably maneuver. In the past, the company picked my bike up at a motorcycle store, and I never witnessed the intake.

This time, though, I went cheaper, and delivered to one of the company's contract terminals. Those guys expected me to ride this 750lb lovable hunk onto this palette and into a groove for the front wheel.

I'm not all that used to this new mountain of metal, so I focused real hard. Physics is with you at speed. Standstill and crawling speed has all Newtonian mechanics lined up against you. And it's damn embarrassing to tip over in front of warehouse guys. You can see in the background the stuff these people ship. Photo copiers, pinball machines. I saw Pilates reformers.

I was so happy that I was not the recipient of those. If you've seen a reformer in a Pilates studio, you realize that whoever unpacks these boxes has an assembly manual to study. Fifty pages of warnings, and a page of exploded-parts schematics with 5pt print annotations clarifying: '7/63" extraction gumble.'

Handy lift. — Telescoping, this platform extends
surprisingly high!

Which reminds me—sorry, bit of consciousness streaming— I saw this great lift. It reaches surprisingly high, and I pondered all that I could do with this thing. Until I saw the no-no's, whose number surly exceed the use cases.

Anyway, while this image doesn't show my own bike in this truck, which has mated with the warehouse in this photo, you have an idea how my little overweight lovely travels.

Lift warnings — But check out all that you cannot do...