It was only a 6 mile ride back to Holiday Express Zurich airport, but it was a nerve-wracking ride, as the kids were back to wriggling on the bike and shaking things up in city traffic with bike lanes, not bike paths. The tandem timing chains interfered with each other, locking up the cranks once in a while if the kids fought me on the bike even a little. Nevertheless, we rolled down to the airport hotel in just 50 minutes, where the checkin was once again smooth and fast.
I then adjusted Xiaoqin's seat height, unloaded her luggage, took care to have the ebike contract in my wallet, and rode back to Winterthur to return the ebike. Google estimated a 90 minute bike ride but with the ebike assist set to high, I got there in just over an hour, with the extra 2 minutes spent circling the city trying to find the rental return/train station. Once there, a 13CHF ticket got be back to the Rumlang train station, where I got back in time to finish the pizza the rest of the family had ordered for lunch, to disassemble the bike, pack it into our bike boxes, and weigh everything and repack to stay under the 23kg flight limit.
The next morning, the shuttle took us to the airport, where the Swiss checkin agent, puzzled at not finding our outbound flight from the USA in his system (because we'd flown in on a United Flight, not Swiss Air), said: "OK, since you flew out here without getting charged, I won't charge you on the way back!" We cheered and had a mostly uneventful flight home.
The Supershuttle, however, delayed us an entire hour on the way back. The service has deteriorated to the point where it is probably not worth using them any more. But we got home all safe and sound, and none the worse for our European adventure. The next day, Boen asked to go to the water-slides, and was very disappointed when I explained that the European water slides he'd loved so much were no longer accessible.
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