+1

The soft case us useful when you are loading up a van or whatever. The airline might not even accept that.

I just looked into rentals - it's $55 to rent an iron case from a local bike shop. So that saves me on the cost of the case if I wanted to check as baggage. Still talking about $200 in extra baggage fees though. But there's the convenience/security of having my bike more or less with me the whole time and the iron case has wheels so it's not too bad to roll through the airport.

Shipping would be about $100 FedEx as best as I can estimate online. Plus whatever handling charge the hotel would add (I travel for work a lot and have noticed more and more hotels charging handling for packages going through their shipping dept.).

In either case I'll have to break down the bike and bring tools to put it back together.

Shipping would be a slight PITA (having to track down a box and pack it up and haul it to a FedEx location) and means I'm without my bike for a few days on either end of the trip, but does appear to be significantly cheaper.

Last year I was at this same conference and really wished I had my bike - the weather is great, it's a huge event so traffic is a ****show and cabs are nearly impossible to get, public transit is practically nil. I just have to decide if the hassle is worth it.

An allen wrench to turn handlebars, a 15 mm wrench for nuts, and a pedal wrench should cover it?

Surly Travelers Check!

edit:
I see it isn't on their site anymore :(

Yep. I've travelled with a bike on Amtrak before and that was all that was needed. I'd be bringing all those tools except maybe the pedal wrench anyway, because I don't like riding without tools.

I called the hotel and it seems like they are fine handling a large shipment like a bike. So I'm leaning towards shipping via FedEx. About $50 each way. I have a car so I can get to a FedEx location to get it out of Chicago, and can ship it directly home coming back. Now to find a bike box...

ask your bikeshops. they throw away bunches of bike boxes from shipments.
I got free bike boxes from my lbs - they just break them down and put them in the dumpster.

I would take the internal padding too. My last trip, Fedex was pretty rough with my bike

Good thing you have a car as I remember it being such a pain in the ass to get a taxi that would fit two bikes when flying out of chicago. The taxi companies didn't want to send out a van unless we were handicapped. Had to wait out on the street and got lucky when a taxi van went by.

Honestly, I don't play it a whole lot, don't like to, but it comes in handy sometimes.

A lot of places with tons of military folk can usually tell by your haircut, so you tend to pick up discounts whether you want to or not.