Packing and Traveling With Your Bike: Part 1 of 2

Introduction:

Traveling by air with your bike can be a fairly annoying thing. It isn't enough that you already have to worry about jet-lag and racing in an unfamiliar place but also you have to worry about potential damage caused to your bike during travel.

If you're a mega-pro, you have mechanics to worry about this for you and all you have to do is ride.
If you're an amateur or some sort of low-rent Elite racer, you have to do all this yourself. Do a good job and you'll have one less thing to be anxious about and go back to thinking about what's important: your performance.

If you pack your bike in an ad-hoc manner and in a rush, it will be damaged. I see a lot of people doing a bad job packing their bikes and it's because they don't even know where to start. My goal in writing this and making it public is to illustrate my method, which gets used a lot. In addition to the numerous bikes I've packed for other people, I've packed my own and my brother's bikes dozens of times for travel to Europe and to the West Coast with no damage.

It is important to understand that damage to a bike inside its travel case is most frequently caused not by external forces but rather by the various parts of the bike shifting and making contact inside the case.
The two types of damage that can occur are abrasions damage and impact damage. It is important that the parts move as little as possible inside the case and that the parts that are in contact are well-protected.
It is best to take the bike apart as much as possible for transport.
One detail which really helps in this is to remove components such as rear derailleurs, chains, pedals, and the brake rotors off mountainbikes and pack them together in an accessory box inside the travel case. Bike manufacturers do this to be able to pack bikes more efficiently and to prevent damage when the bike is shipped from the factory to the distributor to the bike shop, and so should you when you travel with your bike.
Another good idea is to cut the cables completely and install new ones at your destination. Cables don't cost much and not having your handlebar attached to the rest of the bike via cables is a great help in trying to Tetris your machine into a travel case.

It is important to have a clean bike to start with. Packing a dirty bike sucks, but not as much as unpacking and re-building a dirty bike. Do yourself a favor and clean the bike before you leave. The chain should then get a very very light coating of lube; just enough to thwart corrosion.
Everyone does a better job packing the bike on the outbound leg than on the inbound leg. This is to be expected. After your event, you'll be tired and anxious to get the bike packed and get on the plane to go home. Don't rush and don't get sloppy because you will not be pleased with the results.

Part 2 here.