Finally the day has arrived, the bikes have cleared customs and are ready to be picked up.
The storage warehouse for DB Schenker is out by the airport, not that far away. We had somewhat calculated that the measurements of the bike creates and figured that they would fit side by side onto a trailer that my dad owned. Paul, my brother had the truck, so we are in business! All was set up, but you have heard it all before! You know how this scenario is playing out don't you…I swear,I don't make this stuff up, it just happens and makes for excellent blogging material!…ha ha ha
We receive a call from Paul, who was on his way with the truck and trailer, and he has broken down on the side of the freeway with a suspected broken wheel bearing. Ok, he is not far away, we can drive the 1981 Toyota Celica Supra, complete with a tow hitch on the back, mind you, collect the trailer and complete our mission! Done…you have just got to love the picture your mind would be drawing now, hey? I know that Sarah, our rep at DB Schenker, and Adam, who was charged with loading the crates on our Supra/trailer combo were surprised and curious when we pulled up to the loading dock. Adam sized up the situation and came up with a genius plan…this may just work! He cut wooden planks and laid then across the bed of the trailer, put a layer of pallets on the planks and then the crates on top of the pallets. The creates were butted up against each other and then centrally positioned on the larger pallets that were resting on the boards that Adam cut…ha ha ha! Got it? Kev securely strapped down the creates with those awesome ratchet straps…these babies were not going anywhere! We carefully accellerated towards the exit, the load was longer and taller than the car, I was going to need some pretty serious neck adjustments after this ride home! It took an hour or so extra traveling at 60k/h to reach the farm where Paul would lift the bike creates off the trailer with his tractor and hay poker forks. The hay poker fork lift operation was nerve racking for us to watch Our hearts skipped a couple of beats during this process…but, "no worries" Paul gently placed the creates on the shed floor with expert precision.
I could not believe how darn clean the bikes looked! We really did a super fantastic job, and can you believe it Aussie Agriculture did not even inspect them! I'm sure that they had a peak though. Shanker said Agg's comment was "Oh they're BMW's, they'll be clean" I really do not know the logic behind this??…All I can say is Thank you Thank you!
We spent the next couple of hours reassembling the bits that were removed from the bikes.