Shipping bicycle from US to UK

Does anyone have any experience with shipping road bikes? I've decided to leave the US and come back to the UK, but I recently bought a bike and I'd really like to bring it back with me.

I'm in the process of investigating the different ways/costs of doing this and was just wondering if anyone had any advice or experience with it?

At first, the easiest option seemed like it would be to fly it with me as excess baggage, but I am planning on travelling for a few days first (hopefully visiting a friend in Hawaii and then spending a couple of days in New York on the way back to London) so this wouldn't be very feasible, with both the extra weight (along with 2 suitcases), the cost of taking it on each plane (about $150+ per flight) and also the possibility of the box being searched by the TSA and getting damaged.

So, I'm now looking at either shipping it by land/sea or if necessary, selling it here before I leave. The cheapest option would be just a basic USPS service, but I'm wondering how safe this is (in terms of damage in transit etc.) and if maybe it's worth forking out for faster UPS or FedEx shipping. Thing is, I only have a week to ship it, because I'm planning on leaving Albuquerque on Thursday or Friday next week (as my student visa is being cancelled early, I only have a certain number of days within which to leave the US).

I've decided to leave the US and come back to the UK, but I recently bought a bike and I'd really like to bring it back with me.

No advice, but whazzup?  Is your course of study finished already?  Seems like only yesterday you couldn't wait to get to Albuquerque?!

 

No advice, but whazzup?  Is your course of study finished already?  Seems like only yesterday you couldn't wait to get to Albuquerque?!

 

Yeah, I was excited to go, but it's turned out that it's not quite what I thought it would be . I kind of knew as soon as I got there that I might have made a mistake in coming back to UNM, but my family and one of the international advisors persuaded to give it a go, at least for one semester, which I did. Eventually, I felt a bit better about being here, but I still haven't been all that happy or comfortable being here (the only things keeping me going were watching UK TV shows on Netflix/DVD, talking to my UK friends on MSN and knowing that I would be coming home for 2 weeks in July!)

To be honest, I've kind of had a tough time here the last few months, mostly to do with the fact that the PhD work is much harder than I was expecting and that I'm really not all that interested in the project I'm doing. I've been mulling over whether to come back for the last few months, but had no clue what was the right decision, but when I left to come home for a visit and realised that I had no desire to come back and was absolutely dreading it (I was in tears for 4 days at the thought of flying back!), I knew that I needed to come home .

I also miss a lot about the UK - my family, my friends, just my life in general, and I'm really just not happy over here. I really don't want to be unhappy for the next 5 years, doing a project that I have very little desire to do and am not actually all that good at (computer programming and fluid flow models!). I considered the possibility of trying to transfer to a different US university (UNM doesn't have any one working in the area I really wanted to be in), but truth is, I don't really want to be in the US anymore. I've now spent almost 2 years of my life here in total, and I've now realised that I'd rather be at home instead.

Sorry that the studies didn't work out for you!  It's funny (I don't mean 'ha ha' funny) to hear your story sort of the opposite way around, if you know what I mean, compared to US citizens who move here & are unhappy & decide to move back there.  On the other hand, there are those of us (myself included) who, like you, prefer our lives in the UK.

Good luck!  Nothing wrong with trying something & finding out it's not for you.  At least you won't regret not having given it a go.

Hope you get some good advice on the bike!

Thanks .

I don't really like the idea of being a 'drop-out' or a 'quitter', but at the same time, I also want to do what's right for me and what will make me happy . I really enjoyed living in the US last time I was here and had a great time staying with my aunt and cousins in Arkansas last week, so I know that it isn't that I can't handle living here at all or that I can't handle living abroad, but instead I've realised that living in the US and doing a US PhD aren't the right things for me to do at this time in my life .

So, I'm in the process of considering my options for the UK - whether to apply for a UK PhD (and whether I really want to do one after all), or to look for a proper job and start my career for real, or to do a PGCE and become a teacher (I found that I really enjoyed being a TA last semester ).

Are/were you training to be a programmer?  (or is that what you're trying to switch away from now?)

Are/were you training to be a programmer?  (or is that what you're trying to switch away from now?)

No, I was in geophysics (something I've wanted to do since I was 15... or so I thought), but the stuff I've been working on was all computational modelling and writing algorithms (Geodynamics), which I'm really not very good at (programming does not come naturally to me, although I've taken a couple of uni courses in Computational Physics). I did my masters project in Seismology and while I thought I wanted to work in geophysics in general, I've now realised that if I do a different PhD in the future, I want to work in the Seismology area and not in Geodynamics.

Sorry it's not working out. As for your actual query , back in 2000 I brought my bike over as excess baggage. The shop took it apart and boxed it for me. It worked just fine. Now I know fees for baggage have changed over the last few years, but I'd certainly start with the airline you intend to fly with to see what they have to offer.

BTW, my DH, a geologist, hates modelling, too!

DH did the same as balmerhon - took it to the bike shop to get it boxed and brought it as luggage.  He didn't pay any extra baggage fees because it counted as one of his pieces.  Likely I am going to do the same with mine now that our moving estimate came out so high! 

Thanks for the help .

Yeah, the excess baggage was my first thought, but I'm likely to be taking a 16-hour train and then a 4-stop trip (over 1.5 weeks) and most of the airlines charge $150 for a bike plus the excess baggage charge because I will have already reached the free baggage limit on each flight and I can't afford to pay over $600 to transport the bike around with me (plus, it's like 33lbs in weight which I can't carry easily, especially with 2 other suitcases!). If I was flying straight back to London from Albuquerque, I might fly it with me, but I want to get the travelling in too as I don't know when I will come back to the US in the future.

The university bike shop have said they will box it up for me, but I think I'm going to have to ship it back separately rather than fly with it . Otherwise I can always sell it here, but I just bought it and really like it .

Right sorry, you did say you had travel in between.  I agree, I would ship it in your case.