After my bike companion Fons and myself decided that we should go for it, it was time to start arranging the more formal things. For example plane tickets.
For my previous trip to cycle the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, I asked for help from a travel agency to arrange my ticket. My reason for that is that I could also ask for their help when I required a reschedule for the trip back home. So, this time I got again in contact with the same travel agency and explained them my new plans. Unfortunately, they immediately informed me that they will not arrange any airline tickets anymore that includes a bike. They had to disappoint some customers in the last two years and therefore decided to stop offering that. Seems like the airlines are making it more difficult these days. Bummer!
For me that is even another reason to get help. I decided to contact another travel agency. This time a travel agency that we used pre-Internet for our travels. They quickly responded that they would like to help us, and already included a proposal for tickets. So far so good!
We quickly agreed to the proposal so that the travel agency could get an option on the tickets while arranging our bike reservations. After that, we had to wait, and wait, and wait even more. The travel agency often tried to get more information, but Delta Airlines let us wait for nearly 4 weeks.
Two days before our option would expire we got the good news that the bike reservations were confirmed. The bad news, we had an option for tickets that could be changed without an additional fee. Just before the bike confirmation, they changed the terms and now we have to pay the 200euro fee for a change. Really not happy with that. Unfortunately, we have no alternatives without paying more. While waiting for the bike confirmations, our return flight was also changed. We now only have 50 minutes in Salt Lake City to get on our transatlantic flight to Amsterdam. But that is something we’ll worry about later, things can still change.