The Long Way Home

I am packing, not for going home, but for my cycling trip in New Zealand on my way back to Australia. Going home is the easy part, packing-wise. I am sure I have some clothes left at home to wear, but packing for the cycling trip requires a lot of planning, much more than my cycling trip to Vietnam last year.

Packing for a cycling trip to Vietnam was so easy, I did it in half an hour. In Vietnam, food was good, cheap, and everywhere; cheap accommodation was also found everywhere. So it was like a catered trip. New Zealand, on the other hand, is much more sparsely populated and things are not cheap. So I will have to bring all of my camping gear, making the packing a bit more complicated. So I take out my packing list for a cycling trip and my packing list for a camping trip, get a box from a bike shop, and get to work.

And, with my bike taken apart and put into the box and everything else in a duffel bag, I am ready to go.

Auckland from the air

My flights from Brisbane to L.A. via Auckland are uneventful. After clearing immigration at LAX, I stroll over to baggage claim. My duffel comes tumbling down the carousel, but my bike is nowhere to be seen. I stand and wait by the odd-size baggage area. As the baggage area clears of people from the flight, I know something is not right. A brief chat with the baggage guy confirms my suspicion: they have lost my bike. Well, at least they have lost it now, and hopefully not when I am in New Zealand and needing my bike a month from now. I fill out a form and walk out of the airport terminal unencumbered.

Next, at the train station, I find out that train tickets to Fresno are all sold out for the day. Oh, right, it is the Sunday after Thanksgiving - everyone is traveling. It did not occur to me to book my train ticket ahead of time; I didn't think that many people actually travel by train in the US. Apparently I was wrong. So I crash the night at my cousin's place.

On Monday morning, with train tickets in hand, I board the bus for Bakersfield. I have to travel by bus over the mountains north of L.A. into the Central Valley of California, then pick up the train in Bakersfield where the train line starts.

Twenty miles out of Bakersfield, the train comes to a halt. After a while, the speakers crackle to life. The conductor announce that a freight train in front of us had hit a truck at a crossing, someone was killed, so we have to go back to Bakersfield. In Bakersfield, the bus takes us around the site of the accident to Wasco, where we board another train. Six-and-half hours after leaving L.A., I finally get to Hanford train station, where my mom, my sister, and my little nephew have been waiting.

I am finally home! But my bike is still lost, sitting somewhere in Brisbane, Auckland, or LAX.