Not a good start to our Tour, a couple of little issues before we even step a foot out the door, but they were not trip-killers, just a bit annoying. The first little "hiccup" was a text from Qantas saying our direct flight to Sydney was cancelled. Not something you want to hear the night before flying out to Europe. So after many, many minutes of Wendy waiting on the phone to speak to a real person, our flights were changed to reroute to Sydney via Brisbane. First issue sorted. Our friend John generously drove us to the airport on the day of departure and dropped us off with plenty of time to spare. Qantas then inform us that because the flight to Brisbane is a smaller prop plane our bikes "might not fit on". The exact reason we elected to fly direct to Sydney via jet in the first place. "The bikes will be flown, just don't know when", they said. Maybe we could do a walking tour of Germany? If that wasn't enough the Qantas printer at the check-in was on the blink and they couldn't print luggage tags for all the legs. So they put a manual tag on for Dubai - Frankfurt. Our fingers are crossed that someone sees it and doesn't offload our stuff in Dubai. Eventually got underway a little late but ok for our Brisbane - Sydney connection. Sitting in the Qantas Club sipping on a very nice Penfolds Shiraz Bin 28 certainly helped us forget about the problems at the start. Dubai / Frankfurt here we come.