All Packed up and on the Way

"It's a weird feeling to travel on an international flight with so few belongings..."

by Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, Pactimo Brand Ambassador

The two of us in Boston met last night to pack up our boxes, while Dave and Patrick in their respective cities did the same. It's tough to pack up the delicate bike machinery to both fit in narrow rectangular boxes and be appropriately protected during transit!

But, we got the bikes all packed up and ready to go. And then today, a somewhat hurried drive to the airport for all of us after trying to finish up work so that we could actually leave for three weeks! I was running around town picking up last-minute things - tiny replacement washers for my aero bars, some lightweight pants from Patagonia, earplugs from CVS in anticipation of the other guys snoring. But, we all made it to our respective US airports!

To the left is Dave, rushing from a shift at work that ended at 8am to a 10:30am flight out of Denver and on the right is Patrick, with his bike in the JFK airport.

I drove with Don (and Peter) to the airport in Boston with our two boxes (thanks Peter!)

And Don shepherded our bikes through a long Delta bag drop line:

It's a weird feeling to travel on an international flight with so few belongings (once we checked the bike boxes, of course). We only had these tiny bags with the stuff we'd need for the flights since everything else was in the box with the bike.

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ABOUT JUSTIN DE BENEDICTIS-KESSNER 

Justin is a professor at Boston University and has lived in Boston for the last 8 years. He met the others when he was a PhD student at MIT. He was introduced to recreational bicycling at a young age by his father in Berkely, CA, where he grew up. In high school, he started rowing, which he continued as an athlete at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, and then as a coach for the men's lightweight rowing at MIT while in grad school. Justin completed his first century ride on his bike in 2012 and rode across the U.S. in 2014 from Seattle to Boston with Don and Dave. Justin is also a Pactimo Brand Ambassador Alumni.

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