Despite SwissAir's reassurance that they would deliver the bicycles by 11:00, at 10:30 they had not done so, hence my brother, Mike and I took another Taxi to the train station and went to the airport to fetch our bikes.
The way it worked out, my bike had emerged from the experience unscathed, but Mike's bike had a bent rear deraileur hanger. Worse, he had packed his saddlebag in his bike box, and that was nowhere to be seen, with the United Airlines bike boxes mostly in tatters. We spent more time filing claims (it was entertaining to watch the Swiss airline agents pronounce "Carradice" "Karra-dee-chay", just like the joke that Pardo and Jobst like to make), and went back to Zurich with the bikes, where Roberto met us with some tools. He had unfortunately crashed on the tram tracks in Zurich while getting to Zurich HB, but fortunately there was no serious damage to my brother's bike. They had not found Roberto's checked lugguage, so Mike and Roberto went off to find bike parts and gear to replaced what they had lost, and my brother and I had lunch, and rode a little bit along the Zurichsee. Both our bikes had had wheels tweaked a bit in transit, but neither had anything that couldn't be fixed. It was obvious at this point that we wouldn't get any serious riding in today, so I called the Hotel Zwirgi and cancelled our reservations with an explanation and an apology.
By 7:00pm, everyone was back at the apartment, pasta was being made, all the bikes had pedals, and Mike's bike had its deraileur hanger straightened. Right after dinner, Roberto checked the airline web-site again, and discovered that his lugguage was on due in Zurich in half an hour or so. A phone call to the lugguage service confirmed that, and he headed off to the airport to pick it up. By midnight he had returned with everything he needed for touring, and we were all set for the day.