My wife and I are planning on buying a new tandem over the winter and our local dealer carries Santana and Burly. We are looking for a bike to take on trips, hoping to get the thing to Italy for a tour in June. We have ridden my parents old (1993?) steel burly (mtb) tandem a fair bit this year and are ready for something fancy (or at least more fancy). Our local shop doesn't have any tandems in stock but we managed to take a ride on a Santana Niobium and Burly Rivazza. We weigh about 330# or so, we actually like the aluminum frame better and it was waaay less expensive.

Our big "problem" (maybe?) is that we want to take this on trips and Burly doesn't make a "sectionable" tandem. I figure a Santana Sovereign SE with the couplers will be about 5700 and the box about 800. 'Course I've gotta have the reynolds fork and the disk brake so that's another 700. And the XL size requires taking the fork off to get it into the box so they recommend a King headset for another 125. So, being the XT/Ultegra rider that I am, I'm freaking out about this 7300$ bike when we really liked the Burly Rivazza that cost a lot less (not sure of the MSRP...but it's a lot less).

Now I would really like to buy my bike from my local shop, I just really dig'em there. And I can appreciate a nice ride, I've got a quiver of single bikes and have been riding for 14 years (mtb, ss, fixie, road, TT, cross, freeride, and the "trainer bike" that lives a life of hell in the basement). Is this a "you get what you pay for" situation or is this a "you're gonna really pay a premium to ride the top name stuff and be able to take it with you" situation?

OK, sorry it's getting so long but one other thing-what about traveling with a non-stowaway type bike? What if you can't speak a lick of Italian? And what about putting the "taken apart" Santana into a single bike box (that we already own)? Is that possible? Or should I just get the Santana and forget it? Thanks in advance for all of the help