samadhisoft.com

All day today I’ve worked flat out getting the motorcycle ready to ship. The truck’s coming tomorrow on Wednesday between two and four in the afternoon.

Everything always takes longer than you think. I pressure washed the bike and then I began to remove the parts that had to be taken off and placed into the shipping crate separately because they’d have made it too long or too tall.

Then, there was the matter of draining the gasoline. Easily said but tougher to do. I finally had to take the tank off and empty it and then put it back on. An hour or more shot.

The battery had to come out and I discovered that the cells were low on water so that took time to deal with.

Then there was the headlight assembly to remove. It makes the m/c two inches too tall for the crate. And, it didn’t come easy. Finally, after a lot of stressing and head scratching and resisting the urge to just give it a damn good yank, I sorted it out. Another hour vanished.

I received news from the shipping folks that I had to overnight FedX the bike’s title to them. And that took some time.

All the time, I’m watching the clock and pushing and pushing.

Finally, the bike’s ready and I roll it out to where I’ve got the pallet strategically placed for the truck’s lift gate. Once the bike’s on the pallet, we won’t be able to move it much, if at all.

I roll it up on the pallet and position it. It’s raining and a bit windy. No matter – got to press on.

Meanwhile, Sharon, my wife, is in the garage painting the crate’s top and sides with all the various things that need to be there like the destination address, this side up and that sort of thing.

I’m outside tying the m/c down to the pallet according to the plan I worked out a day or so ago. Tying and tightening. Tying and tightening. I get done – at least I think I’m done with that part – and I look at the pallet from a distance – and it is bowed – way bowed – impossibly bowed. I know, just by looking at it, that the crate’s top will never mate with the pallet correctly with that much bowing.

I’m bummed and tired so I go in and eat the second half of my lunch and have a bit of coffee. Sheron and I talk and it’s looking like I’ll need to contact the shipping folks first thing in the AM and wave off the truck for another week while I sort all of this out. But, I’m not sure yet.

After sitting and thinking for a bit about why the pallet’s bowed, I work it out and I see that I can strap the m/c down a different way and avoid stressing and bowing the pallet. Of course, a good question at this point is, if I undo the pre-stress on the pallet, will it rebound to it’s former shape? It’s 5:30 PM and the light willbe going soon. I decide that since I can’t contact the shipping people until morning anyway, I might as well wade in again and see what, if anything can be done.

I untie everything and start in again and I can see immeditely, that this is a much better plan. Less rope, better tensioning.

It is amazing. You try to think something out and then you implement it. And it is rarely as good as you’d imagined. But, having dented your ego, you go in again and redo things with the input of what you learned was wrong the first time and, with this empirical (and not so mental) approach, you end up with a better solution.

So it is here. The bike is more secure, the ropes are tighter and there’s no obvious reason what any of the tie-down stress applied should be bowing the pallet.

But, the pallet’s still bowed. I get Sharon to come and help me and we run some 2×4’s under the middle of the pallet so that the ends are suspended and then I stand on one of the ends. The pallet is now mostly straight. Yahoo! if it sits this way overnight, I think it will be good.

With this encouragement, I press on tying the remaining ropes. But, I have to stop as the light’s basically gone so I setup an outside light and continue. The rain comes and goes.

Finally, it’s all tied down according to plan #2 and the pallet’s looking good.

Still, I can’t stop. I’ll have to either call and cancel in the morning right away or let the truck come on. And, if it comes and I’m not ready, it’s a wasted trip, some pissed off shippers and probably a bill for not less that $165 for the truck’s time to ride out here and back.

I’d like to know if I’m close enough or not to pull this off. I’m worried because as I get down to the last minute under pressure, the chances of me forgetting to do something or pack something essential into the crate or whatever are growing with the pressure and the late hour. And, of course, if there’s biological debris in the crate because I was in too much of a hurry to keep it all clean for NZ BiSecurity, then all the cleaning was wasted and they’ll sterilize it all and charge me for the pleasure.

It’s 7:30 PM and cold and I’m down to the next step which I’m afraid is a big one. All of the small stuff like the bike’s luggage carrier, the front headlight assembly, the front fender, the battery, the tools I’m sending, the helmet, gloves and goggles and all such need to be placed on the pallet. I’ve been envisioning making custom wooden mounting brackets to hold and support these things and I know that will be a lot of small, detailed, slow and fussy work.

I carry the luggage carrier out and place it on the pallet behind the front wheel and the engine’s pipes. It just fits and nicely. Suddenly, I have an epiphany. Why not bubble wrap the hell out of all such pieces and simply wedge them into spots around the botton of the bike on the pallet. At worse, I’ll have to put a strap over a piece and attach the strap with a small nail which is quick and easy.

So, I bring all of the pieces out and lay them out on the pallet. All of them are easy except for the battery which does need specific support. But, this is WAY better than I’d been imagining.

I definitely have the kind of engineer’s brain that makes simple stuff way too hard sometimes. <sound of my hand slapping my face>

At 8 PM, I call Sharon out and show her the progress and the plan and tell her I’m thinking I am not going to wave off the truck. I can pressure wash the bike and pallet combo in the morning early to reclean it and buy a length of bubble wrap from the postal store up the road and pack all the stuff that’s going and have the top of the crate on the pallet by noon – so long as no more big problems come up. I decide to go for it.

I really want the m/c gone tomorrow. I’ve got several other big projects screaming for time before I leave for New Zealand on November 7th and time is a pressing me. If the m/c doesn’t go, it will continue to eat my brain and time. If it goes, I can change to the next project.

So, 7 AM tomorrow. Mr.Optimism is going out there again to slay the beast. Wish me luck.

Oh, and here’s the crate after Sharon’s painting improvements:

Ps. for those of you obsessed with the impending end-of-the-world (crash-blogging and all that), I haven’t forgotten. I’m just saving it all up. Though it may not be until I arrive in the southern hemisphere that I gain sufficent time back to do that small matter the justice it deserves. I’m just steering this little paper-boat life of mine here along between the falling dollar and the rising insanity hoping it’ll all stay stable for a bit more. And, check air fares to NZ round-trip. They are running $2000+ and I don’t think they are ever going to get much better with fuel prices rising. It’s going to be damned difficult to make it down there in another few years. Boating, anyone?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 21:07 and is filed under New Zealand, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.