Goin'home...
Despite a little hangover ;-) I got up early in the
morning because I needed to give my bike a wash before I could drop it
of at cargo. Before I finally rode her over to the airport, I strapped
my sleeping bag, air mattress and another bag with lots of heavy stuff
onto her. I also didn't took off the tool bag nor did I emptied the tool
boxes. I'd been told that I can't have anything tied to the bike during
flight but I tought it's worth a try (less stuff to carry).
I reached the cargo building, dropped off my paperworks
and the guy at the counter asked "Ok, your truck standing at the loading
ramp??" "Truck?? What Truck?? I'm shipping a motorcycle!!" was my reply,
immediately remembering the trouble I've had on arrival. "Well, how'd you
get your bike here?" he asked and I said "I rode it!" And almost giving
me a heart attack he asked "What!?! You haven't crated it yet??" But luckily
the papers stated that the bike had to be shipped uncrated, tied onto a
flight pallet by itself.
So the only problem was, how do we get the bike
into the building? There aren't any groundlevel gates in the front but
only at the rear, and that's already airport terrain and off limits. But
the guy just asked me to wait a minute and when he came back he told me
to ride to a gate at the end off the buildings a quarter mile further down
the road and somebody would pick me up there. Sure'nuff, when I got there,
a Follow-Me truck arrived, the driver opened the gate and asked me to follow
him. Pretty cool, never got to ride through a Jet parking lot before :-)
When we'd reached the cargo building the guy from
the counter was already waiting there, another one brought out a pallet
and together we tied the bike onto it. I got my papers stamped, the guy
promised me to fly her out asap, called me a cab and I drove back to the
Motel to pick up the rest of my stuff. And of course, nobody had asked
me to take those bags off my bike :-)
A few hours later I was waiting to board my plane.
All the luggage and cargo stuff had been loaded and the freight doors closed
already, when all of a sudden a truck showed up with my bike in tow. They
opened one of the doors again and I could watch them push
my bike into the 767. I really didn't expected her to be flown out
that early cause my travel agent had told me it might take a few days before
she can leave Atlanta.
Well, a little bit later we were airborn, on our
way back home after a vacation that I will always remember as the most
impressing, memorable six weeks of my life.
If that flight would have crashed, I'd have been
easy to identify: I would have been the one with the wide stupid grin on
his face ;-)
