Andy let me come along and experience the process of recovering a motorbike when shipping it home from a far away country.
Learned that "911" was quite the job creator! Customs and Homeland Security is booming.
After settling up with DHL we went to Customs where they asked Andy questions like "How long did you live in Chile Mr. Pain?". They coldn't tell by looking at his passport I guess. Anyway Andy was happy to get this piece of paper.
From there we went to the air freight warehouse where Curiosity was being held. We found some people there that have low job satisfaction. They let us know that we must take the crate along with the bike and the crate was a big one.
How big could it be? It is built around a 250 Exciter. Then it occured to Andy that the shipping fee was based on volume! The bigger the crate the greater the volume. This explains something.
The guy attempted to bring the crate down the loading ramp with a fork lift. He first tried to pick up the crate in the middle but the crate was wider than the door. Took the guy a bunch of tries, he just couldn't get that 11 ft crate to go thru a 10 ft door. He finally slid the forks under an end and drug it down the ramp.
We took the crate apart with hammers. It was fun!
We discovered that the super sized crate allowed the bike to arrive in a tipped over condition. Had the crate been sized for the bike it might have remained upright but then shipping would be less costly.
They used tie down straps in the leasteffective way I have ever seen. Not sure what they thought this would do to keep the bike from moving.
Bike loaded, crate loaded and Andy happy.
Curiosity in new home. Crate going to a better place.
