Originally Posted by
jefnvk
I've got a very inexpensive bike, the arriving with something broke is a small concern. It isn't so much the cash to fix that is a concern, but the having to find a ride to a bike shop that has the parts in stock and can fix it quickly.
We flew into Copenhagen, arriving on a Saturday afternoon. The rear brake arm on my wife's bike was damaged, and no shops were open until Monday. My wife was OK with just the front brake, so we still could do some short rides until we could find a shop on Monday. We had already planned to spend a day there anyway, but we could not get it into the shop until Monday. We were lucky; when we found a shop on Monday they happened to have a set of the same model of brakes that were on the bike.
The point is that we lost 2 1/2 days getting the brakes. It was not a big deal because we were going to be on the road for 2 months. However, if we were going to be there for just 2 weeks, it would be a significant amount of time.