GIVE ME THE KEYS TO THE GUN CHEST!!!
HEADS ARE GONNA ROLL...
It is with a very real and uncompromising anger that this blog entry is being posted for all friends and blog followers across New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the USA. My bike arrived as expected into L.A. on June 29th. Unfortunately, owing to what the agents there inform me is a normal handling process, the Cherry Bomb will not arrive in Boston until around July 25th, unless I pay - in addition to the TWELVE HUNDRED NEW ZEALAND DOLLARS I have ALREADY paid - another twelve hundred American dollars to have an L.A. Broker act on my behalf to get it here a week earlier, i.e. July 18th, i.e. still 9 or 10 days beyond the original ETA, around which I booked and paid almost two and a half thousand dollars worth of airfares and spent six solid months planning. As I don't have a bottomless pit of money to pay a broker to save a week, or to extend my flight out of L.A. on September 5th, I'm pretty much in the shit up to my neck. By July 25th I am theoretically supposed to be half way across America, instead of still stuck on the East Coast getting the bike put back together before I can even set off.
The shipping agent in L.A., during a long conversation that I, of course, will be paying for, suggested strongly that a major component of this total and utter disaster is the fact that the shipping agent I used in New Zealand was clearly not sufficiently aware of the Stateside handling procedures to have prepared ME for the reality either. I'm still not sure if that is the case, but from where I'm sitting (read - with no bike, no clothing, no personal effects and no spare cash to fix this catastrophe myself), it looks like that may indeed be the case. If that does turn out to be true, then the shipping company in question would have to be described as a total disgrace to its "international" standard. To that end, I would be making a LOT more noise, in every conceivable public forum I could possibly reach across the world, in an effort to stop as many other trusting people as possible from having THEIR dreams blown to pieces, not to mention the thousands and thousands and THOUSANDS of their precious dollars ending up in the toilet, by risking using that company.
Whichever idiot needs to take responsibility for this f**k up and do the right thing at whatever cost it may incur to themselves, had better step the hell up, get the hell on with it and do it NOW. Its not me. In good faith, I believed the "experts", and I did all the right things in accordance with what I was told.
So what am I doing in the meantime? Well, since I have no bike to go anywhere yet, while I wait for this shameful debacle to be sorted out, for today at least Mac, Captain and I are heading into the woods with an AK47 each (yes, Mac does have three, and I'm not kidding about us doing that) to have a play, and maybe take random shots at any stray shipping agents we might find blundering blindly around in there.
Those of you who know me well enough to understand the impact on anyone stupid enough to stand in front of both barrels of my verbal sawn-off shotgun can trust the fact that that particular trait of mine isn't disappearing anytime soon. And, even though I currently have no crash helmet myself (it being with my thus-far impounded bike), unless this debacle is resolved to get me on the road by the end of next week, some people out there had better make sure they're wearing one if they have to continue dealing with me.
It does go without saying, of course, that those who do what they can and should, to get this shambles put to bed in record time, thereby cleaning up their own mistakes instead of just expecting me to simply roll over and accept the unacceptable status quo (which SOOOOOO aint gonna happen!!!), will be positively acknowledged across the same extensive variety of international forums in which I currently take part, and others I intend to join. Watch this space.