twocicle

Saying that if you can't afford to lose your tandem (many now in the $8-10k range) you shouldn't travel with it seems nieve. Most people can't afford to replace a tandem out of pocket change. You may as well say if you can't afford to rebuild your house yourself you should not own one. We only travel occassionally and only require special insurance for lost property during those trips, so carrying that coverage for the other 50 weeks of the year is not needed.

As far as insurance policies goes, finding a defacto statement depends who you talk to and for what specific peril you are wanting to insure against. For example, we are currently looking for insurance to cover travel by air to France in the fall. We placed 4 calls to our current insurer Allstate - Head office, and 3 agents in our region (NW) and got a different response EVERY time. While homeowner insurance will cover our bikes under personal property with the normal "named perils" listed (theft, fire, etc), there is no "mysterious disappearance" included - a peril that tyically falls into All Perils category. Head office said if we specifically scheduled (took out a "rider") our bike then it would be covered ("all perils") if it never showed up during the trip, one agent said "no problem it is always covered" regardless of scheduling, another said "can't cover it for All Perils even if it is a scheduled item", and the other said "can't schedule bikes, period".

It appears other insurers such as State Farm are better known to provide full coverage for scheduled ("rider") items.

Then, we looked at basic trip insurance but that is a dead end due to the relatively low dollar limits and deferals to airline policies & coverages (only a few hundred dollars per bag).

We are still working to sort this out and find some means of coverage while flying to out of country locations.