Tasmanian Devil of A Puzzle

Today was a day for people who like solving riddles. If that’s you, here goes:

• You have a 50-pound bicycle box, a 35-pound duffel full of bikepacking gear, and a carry-on bag just big enough that you can’t sling the duffel on your back.

• You have to get all your luggage from one bus stop to the next, which is three blocks away.

• You need every single thing in all three containers, so you can’t leave any of them unattended.

• It goes without saying that you can’t carry all of it yourself. In addition to being heavy, it’s also bulky and awkward.

• If you reassemble the bike, you can easily strap all your gear onto it but then you can’t put the bike on the bus. (Only boxed bikes fit.)

• If you don’t reassemble the bike, you can easily fit everything on the bus but you can’t carry it all to the bus stop.

• You can’t fit the bike box in a taxi, Uber, etc. because they’re all Priuses. (Pria? Priux? What’s the plural on that?)

There’s more than one solution to the puzzle. Here are some I considered:

• Carry it all one at a time, leapfrog style. (Total pain in the ass. No.)

• Reassemble the bike, wheel it along dragging the box behind me, disassemble it again once I got to the other bus stop. (Even bigger pain in the ass. Hell no.)

• Wait for school to get out and recruit a couple of kids with skateboards to hire as Sherpas. (Takes too long. No.)

• Honor system. Leave first bag at the bus stop and go back for the bike. (No. What’s that line? Trust in god but tie up your camels?)

• Ask randos what they drive and see if you can pay any of them to drive you three blocks. (Tried it. Failed.)

Here’s the solution that worked:

• Explain the situation to the next bus driver to come by, a lovely person named Miranda who is charming and cheeky in the way so many Australians are, and see if she’ll drive you another three blocks. She agrees to get you as close as she can, at which point you make a high-speed luggage-to-sidewalk insertion like a Blackhawk helicopter dropping a team of Army Rangers into enemy territory.

Let me know if you have a better solution. Bonus points if yours drops you next to a coffee shop right across the street from the bus stop so you don’t have to shiver in a bus shelter for three hours. Miranda did, and then the manager allowed me to stay twenty extra minutes after he closed for the day because he knew it was cold out and it’s pretty obvious I’m a stranger in a strange land.

The drive to Dover was uneventful; all I did was take in the scenery and try not to vomit as my new bus driver—Kevin, charming and cheeky—careened around every twist and turn at breakneck speed. My lingering question along the way was whether my solution to the puzzle could ever work in the US. In a small enough town, I have no doubt someone in a pickup truck would offer to take me from A to B. (That’s what happened in Tasmania too: the proprietor of my B&B—Irene, charming and cheeky—insisted on picking me up at the bus stop, then had me over for wine and made me dinner). But in a city large enough to have public transportation? I have a hard time imagining a bus driver taking an entire extra minute to talk to me, much less offer me a free ride, to say nothing of driving down a different street than what’s on the assigned route, even if only for a couple of blocks.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I ought to have more faith in my countrymen. But my first thought is of general American friendliness quashed by some legalistic fear of losing your job and then your life savings in a lawsuit because the bike box wasn’t properly lashed down with a five-point harness according to OSHA regulations and the Book of Leviticus.