Stuck in Mazatlán

Stuck in Mazatlán
December 24, 2021

Long story short, never use an eBike box to ship your touring bike. They’re large roomy boxes which allow the front fork and headset to remain attached. But the AA baggage people LaGuardia only consider what’s printed on the outside of the box. For some reason my box had an image of a big screen TV. Ostensibly the reasoning is that American couriers are more considerate with large expensive electronics than with bicycles. Yesterday morning after boarding I was asked by the flight attendant if I was traveling with a television, and I replied no, it was a bicycle. Ostensibly it was then assumed that I was traveling with an eBike packed with lithium-ion batteries. Not to mention that an eBike would have been over the weight limit. Why didn't anyone open the box and take a look? Again, this was the same box that I traveled back from San Francisco with last summer. Good boxes are hard to come by. I had never really given the exterior printing much consideration. 

The loud music boomed from Plazuela Machado late into the night. I was awaken early in the morning by leaf blowers. The morning was spent trying to retrieve my bicycle. I went back out to the airport. The local Mazatlan American Airlines representatives were sympathetic and helpful. The officials in New York, on the other end of the line, were complete assholes. They promised that it would be rescanned. I doubt it was scanned the first time. I hoped that it would come tomorrow. What a complete clusterfuck. I rented a bike, not an eBike, and rode around town. I cycled the first part of the route to the ferry. Mazatlán was beautiful. Thousands of flights were being grounded back home because of Omicron. It wasn't the worst place to be stuck. The mountains to the east beckoned.


There's a bicycle inside

Location: Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico

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