Victoria -> Vancouver -> San Francisco -> Brisbane -> Launceston

Tasmania is 19 hours ahead (or 5 hours behind but a day ahead if you prefer), and we had wisely scheduled an early ferry and long layovers in case things went wrong. 

The extra time was unnecessary until Brisbane where we transferred from our United international flight to our domestic connection with budget airline, Jetstar. 

Upon arriving, we needed to hunt down a couple of carts (endangered species in the baggage claim area), collect our bikes and take them through customs (one person operates each cart, and one goes ahead to talk to officials and move the stanchions for the wide loads).

I will say that biosecurity was MUCH less strict here than in NZ, so this portion could have required a lot more time. 

We abandoned our carts and barricaded in the other passengers of the shuttle from the international to the domestic terminal with 3 bike boxes.

We rustled up another cart, and released our hostages. Then were promptly held up by the Jetstar check-in staff whose baggage team won’t touch anything more than 32kg.

After repacking A and F’s bikes (down from 50kg and 38kg that United has accepted to Jetstar’s maximum allowable 32kg), we were then told we’d need to pay $20 per kg over 23kg each for our checked baggage. $20 per kg! That would be hundreds of dollars each.

Fortunately, the eventual arrangement we came to was a mysterious $61 total, which is fine. Honestly, I had been surprised that United accepted my 100lb box of bike and related gear without batting an eye, but dealing with multiple reconfigurations at this exhausted juncture was… not super fun.

It was a short leg to our wonderful Airbnb, and we stayed upright on the left side of the road the whole way. Go us.

Distance cycled: 13.76 km

Ave: 18.0 km/h

Max speed: 42.9 km/h

Alice