How to pack your bike for the Alps

Hi everyone! This is a very important blog post about how to pack, and how not to pack your bike for the Alps Challenge. There’s also a little bit of homework for you. Just for your peace of mind, no trip organisers were harmed in the making of this blog post. I turned our living room into a workshop while my better half was out all day. (Hopefully she’s not reading this!)

As you all know, the bikes are being driven out to Geneva by our super support crew of drivers on the Thursday before the trip. You will be able to drop your bike off Wednesday 17th - Wednesday 24th. More details about this will be emailed out to you. When you drop your bike off it needs to be safely packed to travel on the van. Here’s how to do it.

But first…How not to do it!

No bike bags and no bike boxes

The ultimate sin! A hard bike box.

Bags and boxes take up too much room in the van. It’s absolutley crucial that we get all the bikes on the bag van because of the ATA carnet. If not, this will mean that we could be fined by customs.

Package your bike well, and the bikes will all fit.

Further, bags and boxes take up too much room in the bag van. All of the packaging I used - (except wheel bags) fit inside my parts bag. We still need room on the van once bikes are unloaded for bikes.

It’s also worth mentioning now, that there are two people flying in with their bikes from the US and Spain, so we need to make sure that there is enough room in the bag van for their bike cases.

Homework

I mentioned that there is a bit of homework. Next time you go to your friendly local bike shop. Ask them for some foam tubing 10 -12 pieces in a range of sizes is ideal. This is used to pack new bikes and often is just thrown out. They’re normally happy to give you this for free, but it means that they need to have recently built some new bikes. Ask in plenty of time, they’ll be happy to sort you out. If you have rim brakes, ask for some wheel braces too.

Foam tubing and a bag or small box for parts

How to pack your bike properly: What you need

• Foam tubing x 10 (from LBS)

• Roll of bubble wrap / old bed sheets / or other form of protection. 20 metres cost me €10.99 from Amazon.

• Scissors / stanley knife to cut sheets of bubble wrap.

• Allen keys

• Masking tape / parcel tape or zip ties.

• Bag / small box for parts and tools

What you need

Step 1 - Get your packaging ready

Cut out your pieces of bubble wrap.

I used:

8 pieces of 70cm x 50 cm

8 pieces of 70cm x 25 cm

70cm x 50 cm is a good size for wrapping frame.

Step 2 - Pedals off

Pedals off first. If you take wheels off first, it’s much more difficult if it turns out your pedals are on very tight. Remember left hand pedal is a left-hand thread, so it unthreads the opposite way to normal.

Step 3 - Rr mech off

I remove my rear mech and strap it to the chainstay just to be safe.

I took my back wheel out, so I also took my reach mech off. It stops your bike from being balanced on your mech or mech hanger. If you leave your back wheel in, taking your mech off is optional.

My bike is Di2, so I unplugged the Di2 cable to do this.

Step 3 - Wrap up

Before you start wrapping. Put your Ieft-handpedal at 3 o’clock and right-hand pedal at 9 o’clock (right-hand pedal pointing towards rr of bike).

I used masking tape to keep the bubble wrap in place but parcel tape also works fine. When you’re wrapping bubble wrap you want to wrap it round plenty of times. When you touch it, you don’t want to be able to touch the frame. You want a nice cushion of air to protect your pride and joy.

It’s up to you if you want to take off bottle cage or garmin mounts.

Step 5 - Put all your parts and tools into the bag

When you’ve finished wrapping your bike, put everything into your parts bag or box.

Make sure that you pack:

• pedals

• allen keys

• any mounts

• tape and anything else you will need to pack your bike up again in Nice.

Step 6 - Label your wheels & parts bag

It’s handy to label your parts and wheel bags, so that they can given to you when you arrive when we collect bikes in Geneva.

Handy tips

• Work tidy - work in a tidy area, so that things like pedals or spare brake pads don’t get left behind.

• The rear wheel can be secured to the frame with tape which acts as a nice bumper. See picture below.

• If you don’t use the rear wheel as a bumper, make sure your chainrings are well wrapped.

Have you got any of your own useful tips? Feel free to leave them in the comments below.

Rr wheel can be secured to the non-drive using tape or zip-ties in the highlighed areas. It acts like a bumper protecting your big chainring.

And that’s a wrap!

Forward planning is definitley the key to being able to pack your bike quickly. It took me 45 minutes to get my bike to the stage above and take the photos for the blog. I think it will take 60-75 minutes. Having to take a trip to the bike shop in the middle though would make it take much longer.

All the packaging I used fit in my parts bag. This means there’s space on the bag van for everyone’s luggage once bikes are built.

Any questions?

If you’ve got any questions, feel free to drop me a message. I might not get back to you tonight though, as Sunday is Pizza Night so I’ll be busy rolling out dough balls.