DHL broked my bike.

In shipping my cross bike from Seattle to Cleveland, DHL decided to send it on a whirlwind tour of the USA.

Yeah, you read that right. Seattle to Ohio to Virginia to Ohio to Pennsylvania to Ohio. Logistics are complicated. What's efficient doesn't always make sense to those not close to the operation. I'm guessing that the Virginia trip was completely unnecessary... and people might wonder why DHL is in dire financial straits, looking to have UPS carry freight for them.

In the process, my bike suffered injury... you've gotta do bad things to a boxed bike to bend a derailleur hanger and knock a wheel out of true. I don't know exactly what happened, nor do I want to know. Along with the bike being hurt, a team jersey must have fallen out somehow, because I packed ALL my clothes (clean and dirty) in the bike box for shipment. The jersey was the only thing dirty because I missed it when I did my last load of laundry, so it was in a separate bag on top. Grr. I'd rather have my jersey than the $69 I paid for it, especially since it was the only 2007 jersey that I hadn't crashed in.

I found a Trek dealer online, took it in for them to install the new hangar and true the wheel - they tried telling me that I should go for a super tune-up ($129!) since I also wanted to have the rear brake re-cabled (not DHL's fault) but I figured that would just complicate the damage claim process to not have a separate receipt for the shipping damages. $63.87 for the wheel true, new hanger, and derailleur adjustment. Not unreasonable.

I'm sending the claim form in today... I figured 2 hours at $30/hour was pretty reasonable since it took me about an hour to figure out what the hell was wrong with the bike, plus I had to drive the bike to and from the bike shop, which took about an hour total. I'm guessing they'll dispute this portion.