Monday, 20 August 2012

Sending a bike home

Everything that's good comes to an end, that wasn't different with Mr. Conor, an Irish fellow who lives in USA, and after spending 10 months on a trip trough North, Central and South America with his impecable Suzuki DL 650 V Strom, he decided to send it back home. He contact me trough Horizons Unlimited.com and then came to Iguassu. I got surprised with the quote of sending a bike by air from Brazil to Miami, total of 1.600 US$, a reasonable price if compared with the prices of shipping in Buenos Aires that are easily more than 2.000US$.

But there was an important issue,  the load should have the maximum of 210kg, that's because the bike goes in a passenger plane to Sao Paulo and from there it goes in a cargo plane to USA, but the bike, panniers and accessories were more than 250kg. The solution was simple, bring the weight down taking every single part easy enough to put it back when arriving in Miami.
I assumed the problem and took it personal when the air company told us that would be impossible to bring the weight to 210kg. After a long time taking parts off and putting in a different box and arguing with the air company, eventually we made it, the paperwork was the simple part as I arranged a reliable company that does it and Conor was free to go and pick up his bike in Miami. After we finished with the bike, I took him to the airport in Paraguay and the day after he contacted me from Miami.

Although the stress we had during the process, I believe Conor had a good time in Iguassu, barbecues, dinners, a fews boxes of beers, uncontable packs of cigarrets and loads of fun.






Definetly was an incredible experience and I was sure that the next bike would be much easier as many questions were answered during that process.