On the road again...

And we're off, we've covered nearly 50 miles tonight, it's took since 8am until nearly 7pm tonight to get sorted, get the bikes out of the port & get on the road... bugger that was a good moment when customs finally stamped the paperwork & we managed to start the bikes almost first time.. next time attach all of the battery cables & take them out of gear & they start, amazing!! :-)

A1 Escorts, potty n all!!

Port offices

And at last... the bikes - phew!!

Just to recap first though, we went to a great bar last night for some of the best steak I've ever eaten, a big ribeye cooked nice & rare, a couple of beers & then back to the hotel for some more frustrating time with the Garmin Basecamp software, final result a moan onto the Garmin forum & still no basemaps on the handsets... bloody technology!!

G&M bar... steak city this place...

We were up & packed up in the car by 7.30am, we drove to the port to go to the offices of Wallanaius & Willhelmsen, the shipping company, but found out we weren't allowed into the port without an escort. The escort is provided by a couple of private companies that seem to charge $50 per hour for a person to come with you into the port & take you to all the right offices. In all this 'service' cost us $250 with A1 Escort Service, very friendly but wow, seriously $250???

We went to Customs first, filled out loads of forms with an unhappy official who wasn't too impressed that we hadn't used an agent, nearly an hour with him, then off to the storage office to get the release documents from some very helpful ladies, then off to the warehouse to get the bikes before going back to an office to collect the final release papers & ride the bikes from the port. We finally left all the offices at 4pm, so not bad compared to some of the stories I've read about shipping bikes.

The process seems to be some kind of enchanted system, you can only move to the next step when you've completed the previous one, to complete a step though you have to find the right person, pay the fees, fill out the forms, wait around a bit, then move to another office to do it all again... very paperwork orientated... Glad this was not in India!!!!

Once we dropped off the hire car, we loaded up the bikes with the gear & headed out onto the highways, what a great relief to be moving after all this planning, preparation, travel etc just to get to the start of the trip...

now it's finally time to ride... yee haa!! oh yeah, the weather forecast is thunder storms all week with tornadoes in Colorado, 30 - 40' C temps & hardly any winds around this part of our journey, mmm variable, not much!!

I do have a picture but again this blog loads it upside down... hey ho...

Scorchio!!