Since we both have separate race and training bikes, it makes it possible to ship our race bikes to our destination ahead of time, rather than leave our bicycles in the “care” of the airlines. Besides, the airlines have started charging so much that even when flying cross-country, it’s still cheaper to ship our bikes. Plus, you can purchase extra damage insurance; a good thing when your bikes are worth more than your car!

We recently had a couple bad experiences with UPS, so this trip we went back to using FedEx. We shipped the bikes on Monday and the tracking information that night said it would be delivered on Wednesday. But when I checked the tracking status on Wednesday, I noticed that one of our bicycles, was on the truck to be delivered, while the other was still showing that it was in Henderson, Colorado?! I thought maybe the tracking status just didn’t get updated, but I should have gotten a clue when even that night, it still didn’t show any updates.

So we flew in this morning (Thursday) and got to the hotel around 2 PM. Heather’s bike was indeed delivered, but my bike was nowhere to be found. We immediately made use of the hotel’s free internet access and found that there was no tracking update since last night. So I called FedEx and started a “trace”. I didn’t think much of it as we still had two days for the bike to show up since I wasn’t racing until Saturday at noon. But tonight after checking the status, it finally said it was in Salt Lake City!?!? So we called FedEx again and tried to get more information. They seemed to think it was headed back to Denver and they would figure out a way to get it to us.

If all else fails, I still could ride Heather’s bike, but we did have to buy a couple of small parts to get her bike rideable since some of her parts were packed in my bike case. The other downside is our super light and aero LEW wheels were also in the other case, so Heather is going to have to do the time trial with normal spoked wheels! I didn’t sign up for the time trial since I want to be fully rested for the 105 mile road race, then the criterium on Sunday. It’s a good thing that none of our races overlap and that Heather and I ride the same size frame!