Stewclark how do we do join the French Club, and remember we are not fluent in reading/speaking French, we may need to tow a trailer with a borrowed Granddaughter to help, we have three so we can rotate.
As to shipping our tandem to France, as you will see below the cost just doesn't make sense, but therein lies our debate, buy used here and take to France (one time flight cost) or buy in France. I try to lay out the issues hidden in each option.
Always engage your stoker!
And WOW, settled one thing for sure, we won't be shipping our tandem to/from Tours, one way quote, by BikeFlight, was a shipping quote around $1,000.00, and round trip is $2,000.00 (but that means they deliver it to Tours for pick up in city a big plus, plus all air fare is expensive now). So our options are either buy tandem here and bring tandem to France/Europe once, or, buy tandem in France and therein lies the devils.
We are looking at a tandem this weekend that is used, but appears to be in very very good condition and is made by one of the best local tandem builders, but with dated though top of the line components, and of course first the go/no go of does it fit us. So if we get past that it fits do we buy local, with a long range plan that in 2 and a half years when my wife retires we fly with this bike and begin a long tour of France/Europe?
Advantages would be time to truly dial in this tandem so that it is exactly as we want it, ride it a lot before hand (to dial it in) and practice loaded tandem riding, something we have not yet done and arrive with a great deal of confidence in our ability to ride a loaded tandem. But we would eat the one time $1,000.00 cost of shipment to France.
The other alternative saves the $1,000.00 shipment cost to France, and may fund a better newer tandem, but yikes the used tandem we are looking at, is still being made by its tandem shop but now sells new starting at $4,500.00 and options upwards! Also there's the issue of a new bike that we just won't have a lot of/any time on to dial in, let alone practice riding loaded as we dial things in.
So there are our thoughts/concerns, if we are missing something do share your thoughts.