Up early, I left the hostel by 7:30 am for my 12:45 pm flight from Warsaw to Paris. Once the Polish taxi driver figured out I could translate via Google Translate, he chattered away all the way to the airport.
I didn’t have any specific problems getting the bicycle checked, except my check-in was with Air France, and they charged me more for the bicycle then Delta (the airline I booked my trip with), a problem I can only straighten out from home.
As I waited for my flight, the flight board updated to show a half-hour delay for my flight to Paris. I only had an hour and a half layover in Paris. Linda went through that exact same process flying out of Oslo a week before, also on Air France. I immediately reached out to Delta, knowing I was going to miss that flight out of Paris. The representative assured me I would easily make the flight. I told them I didn’t believe them.
While I managed to be the first person through Customs disembarking in Paris, I missed my flight from Paris to Detroit by 10 minutes. I then had an extended adventure both rebooking the flight, and more significantly finding my way to the shuttle for the overnight stay. You can walk for miles in the Charles de Gaulle airport. For something fairly routine, navigation to the shuttle to the off-site hotel is extraordinarily complex, and not well marked or described.
The hotel only offered a morning shuttle back to the airport at 5:00 am or 7:00 am for my 8:45 am flight, so a very early morning. I spent the wait at the gate talking to Joyce, one of the other passengers with their flight disrupted. The flight from Paris to Detroit landed uneventfully. While poor for US tourism, I think every passenger had a section of seats for themselves, an extreme luxury for international travel.
Despite having passed multiple security checks since I left Warsaw, my sunscreen didn’t pass security in Detroit. My saddle chafing cream, the exact same size, passed.
In Detroit I needed to pass through US Customs, which normally means going to baggage claim, dragging my bicycle through Customs, and then rechecking it. After a long wait the bicycle didn’t show up. Checking the Delta app, while I arrived Detroit, my bicycle headed to Atlanta. That puts Air France at 3 for 3: Linda, I, and my bicycle didn’t fly as expected. My next itinerary will not be on Air France!
After a 4+ hour layover, my flight from Detroit to RDU departed and landed on time. Linda picked me up and we headed home. RDU luggage claim called the next day, and I drove to the airport to pick up my bicycle, none the worse for wear.