Santiago, Chile

What a stressful day today has been trying to get the bike shipped home. We got here with plenty of time, but have been on a wild goose chase for days, and now we are down to the wire far from confident the bike will be safe and we will be on our flight tomorrow.

It wasnt always like this. On the internet, I found acecargo.cl, which from email correspondence I felt very confident was up to the job, if a bit more expensive than I expected. I went back and forth for weeks with Ronald Chaytor with schedules, pricing, measurements, etc. When we finally arrived in Santiago everything seemed to be on the level. We felt fine leaving for Vina for the weekend, with no concerns or worries. When we got back today, all that had changed. Ronald was gone, on vacation at his beach house. His assitant was less than helpful. Everything she said gave amie and I more to worry about. Where they planned on keeping the bike was not safe OR secure, the pricing had already gone up, things like the draining of the gasoline, oil, brake fluid, etc was not addressed... All this and we leave tomorrow. We are supposed to give these folks $1000 and our bike with the keys and leave the country!? I have no confidence we will see the bike again! I would rather just gift it to someone on the street then pay $1000 extra on top of never seeing our bike again!

The reality is, if this doesnt work out tomorrow, we will just have to change our flight and use plan B shipper in Valparaiso, who requires two days minimum. Amie and I had a tough decision to make if we move forward with AceCargo or scrap everything we have done and start over in Valpo. The situation was sticky because the chain could go at any time (its past all adjustment and very noisy) and Valpo is about 70 miles away, plus we pre-paid for our hotel tonight, and we would be SOL on a ride back to the airport, etc. We decided to give AceCargo the shot. I went to bed with a few more grey hairs. Nothing we can do but wait and see...

Amie models her new purse

Amie wonders... Will she ship??

A giant beer and the decor at Schopdog got my mind off our woes