What have other cyclists done when the need arises to store a bicycle + gear for several days in middle of a tour? Have you used warmshowers.com, talked with a local business or some other solution? Are there "left luggage" depots anywhere such as in airports?

This question comes indirectly from some friends who are currently cycling through Central America on their way to cycling across the southern USA via Texas. If someone has a more specific pointer to the Houston area, even better

What I've done when I encountered a similar situation (flying home from Australia to attend a high school reunion in middle of a year long tour) is use this as an excuse to send the bike to a bike shop for maintenance and asked a local motel if they could store my gear. I also had a different tour across the USA where my cycling partner's uncle unexpectedly passed away. We left our bikes for a few days to attend the funeral. That case was a little easier since we had friends not too far away who could watch the bikes and gear.

Lots of youth hostels have short to medium term storage facilities. Generally intended for backpackers who arrive, take off on an organised tour of some kind, then want to return and pick up their heavy luggage. Probably not too hard to work something out.

I do like the bike shop solution though - they might not mind storing your other gear too.

Steve

I"ve used all of the above. When my mom died and I had to return to Boise, I left my bike with some warmshowers people - they lived close to the airport and it worked out great.

In Mexico, we wanted to take the train up to Copper Canyon, so we asked around and found a man who lived right across the street from the train station. He let us put the bikes in his bedroom for the week.

And in India we wanted to take the train up to see the Taj Mahal in the full moon, so we left our bikes at a hotel.

Once we even left them in a hotel for TWO MONTHS when we flew from Nepal to Thailand.

People are quite helpful if you just start asking around.

I had some mechanical problems and had to abort a tour about a three-hour drive from my house. I wanted to leave my bike, take the bus home, and return on the weekend to retrieve the bike. I went to a local bike shop and asked if they'd store it for 3-4 days. No way, they said, they didn't have room for that. So I asked if I could have them fix a broken spoke (one of the problems.) Sure, they said, just leave it here, we'll get to it in 3-4 days.

Maybe your friend could find some really cheap mechanical repair for an LBS to do and leave it on that pretext.

I've generally stored stuff at a hostel.