Car rental info

[Mark Boyd]

from Mary Shaw

Re: [touring]

One of the problems with returning from a tour by rental car is uncertainty about when you'll arrive at the destination and want the car.      The starting date of a tour is much easier to pin down.

So one alternative is to rent the car at home, drive to the start of your tour, and end the tour at home.    This also means you don't have to deal with logistics at the end of the tour, you can just have a celebratory dinner at home.

This also works if there are shuttle services in your area that could take you to the start of your tour.  In the current environment it's possible that a shuttle might work out to be less expensive than a rental car, and it would let you start exactly where you want to.

Of course, if you want a completely flexible tour that goes "I'll start by riding west, make up the rest as I go along, and I'll drive back home when I've toured as much as I wanted to", this won't work.

Mary, Your email address has changed so the touring list thought you weren't a member. I added you to the membership list so that shouldn't happen again. Unfortunately I forgot to tell the list to post your message so I'm including it in this post  from me. 

Your point is a good one and I have often started short tours by driving a rental car to a friend's home and then riding back to home. Now I can't even be sure I can do that, but that will , hopefully,  be easier to do next spring. 

             Mark

[Gary Gilbert]

This topic was timely for me.

I have done many multiday rides for over 25 years.  All were organized rides, some with commercial tour companies, some run as annual events such as Ragbrai.

About 7 years ago I started doing weeklong motel based tours with a small group (4 including me) and have always wanted to do a solo ride.  I finally scheduled one for this week, just 3 days of 40 miles a day.

I drove to the ending point and paid the owner of a small city bike shop to shuttle me and my bike to the starting point after the shop closed.

Upon arrival i had the unfortunate experience of a kidney stone.  Yikes that is not fun.  I had one earlier this year so was quite obvious what is happening.

The ending point has no car rental companies so that doesn’t work.  Uber has only 1 or 2 drivers in the starting town so that did not work.  The clerk at the desk gave me a phone number of a woman who does drive people around and fortunately she was willing to drive me 125 miles back to my car.

Will try again soon or in the spring. My route is a portion of the Michigan Great Lake to Lake trail from South Haven to Port Huron.

Despite all kinds of news stories that the Amtrak Wolverine Line has roll on service, the Amtrak website only allows you to buy a ticket with a bike in a few cities 

Gary

On Oct 8, 2021, at 7:34 PM, Mark Boyd <mark...@gmail.com> wrote:



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