Longing to get back onto a steady diet of end-of-the-world stories of doom and destruction? Yearn no more! Only this last bit of the motorcycle serial saga to slog through and you’re back to the hi-grade stuff:
Armageddamite to spread all over your reality sandwiches, coming up.
But first, this:
So, I was out of bed at six. Darker than hell. Back in bed til 6:20 and then up again, regardless (still very dark). Off to Starbucks for serious inspiration and then back home as the sun’s rising.
I Bubble-wrapped stuff until I ran out of bubble-wrap and then off to the UPS store for more. Strange, sometime you’re just overrun with Bubble-wrap and then one day you need it and you have to go pay five bucks for ten feet. If I was a pack rat, I’d have died right then.
More wrapping and then outside into the light rain to pressure wash off the biological goo-goo accumulating on the machine. Serious fear of NZ biosecurity at this point.
Wah! Wah! Wah! (sirens) – “Look, there’s a leaf under the tail pipe. Grab that evil polluting Yank and call the SAS boys – we’re going to have a hanging!”
There was a bit of dirt up in the deep treads of the bike’s brand new tires. Sharon saw it last night. it was, therefore, there all night and so I slept restless. “They don’t want our dirt in NZ – got to get it out, get it out….” (circular dream – ain’t they fun?).
I tightened up all the rope tie-downs again. All of that looks good. Plan #2 is a good one. Then I strapped the various bubble-wrapped packages onto the pallet gathered around the bike and, finally, we’re ready to lower the top over the whole works. And we do so and it still fits. I mean, it should, right? But after yesterday, when I looked down and saw the entire pallet warped, I trust nothing now.
At this point it is 11:30 and the truck’s due at two to four PM. I’m feeling pretty on-top-of-it – on-schedule, don’t you know? This is until Sharon says, “Look, a big truck’s pulling in.” And it says Global on the side of the truck. Global is the name of the shipping company – this is bad news!
The driver backs up so the lift gate is facing the crate (still open) and basically his truck takes over the entire parking lot (we are open for business whilst all this is transpiring). He comes over and I have deja-vu. His voice is exactly like Sawyer’s voice on the show Lost. But, I manage to get by that and say, “You were not suppost to be here until 2 PM.” “Nobody told me anything about that.“, he replies, in Sawyer’s voice.
Furious brain activity ensues behind my shifting eyes. Shifting as they dart from the crate to the truck to the parking lot to everyone looking at me. Yow! We’ve got a problem, Huston.
A few minutes later, I’ve talked him into exploring the possibilities of a fast food lunch in Monroe and sent him off for an hour.
But, while he was here, we managed to establish that the lift gate on his truck is EXACTLY 8 feet wide – as is the crate. That’s a close but no cigar sort of a deal. His idea was that with four of us, we could man-handle the crate around and drag it onto his lift gate length-wise rather than sideways. The idea being that when unfolded, the lift gate extends out 5 feet from the back of the truck and with an 8 foot crate, it should balance on the gate as he lifts it.
The dragging and man-handling part is not appealing to me. The crate weighs a lot and forcing and stressing it around over gravel and rocks doesn’t sound like a good start to me. Especially when the NZ biosecurity folks are going to be looking at whatever gets embedded in it during the process.
So he leaves and I franticaly finish assembling the crate and screw everything down top and bottom and it’s done and sealed and then Jesus and Dino bring up big large tractor (rear wheels five foot tall) and they proceed to run straps under the crate and they lift it under the bucket.
The truck driver returns, still sounding like Sawyer. I mention this to him and he smiles. He knows Lost and he like Sawyer.
He lets the lift gate down and Jesus gingerly manuvers the crate onto it length wise and then disconnects. The driver pulls the lever and it rises and you can see the lift gate visibly sagging. He says, “That’s a lot heaveier than 500 pounds.” Exactly my thought. We find out later, when it’s arrived in Seattle and been offically weighed, that it’s 842 pounds.
But the gate does rise and now it ready to be pushed into the truck. The tractor approaches and carefully it is pushed inside.
Yahoo! I can see daylight now now. A few papers signed and he’s off and I’m blessing the truck as it departs and breathing a sigh of relief.
Of course, I have no idea what will happen from now until I see the beast on the docks in Littleton, New Zealand, on the South Island but … that’s fun for another day. I’ve got it all insured from here to there so it’s all out of my hands. I can only hope I’ve remembered to pack everything necessary into the crate.
There were tools to reassemble the bike there, There were helmets and gloves. There was even a heavy box of books I tossed in at the last moment. Since I know the shippers are charging me on volume and not weight, it seemed like a good idea.
It’s shipped!  Now look what New Zealanders have to look forward to:
When might we hear “the rest of the story”
gerry