Two Old Fogies! Two Old Goldwings!

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This blog will attempt to cover the trip that my best friend and co-conspirator Doug, who lives in Muskegon Michigan, and I are embarking on around the USA.

Not having done anything in the way of blogging before and being brand new to Travelblog, I am still finding my way around here so bear with me. This should have been started many weeks ago when we first began the planning of our adventure but lack of time, lack of knowledge etc. means that it starts almost at the day I get on the plane to the States.

Just a quick bit of background on the two of us. I live in Scotland, a 65 year old taxi driver. My best friend Doug is retired (to an extent!) and we run a part time web-based parts business for the old 1970s and 1980s Honda Goldwings that we are so passionate about.

The main forum for these old bikes organises rallies each year (in the States, as the vast majority of the members are located there). When I saw that the central rally was being held in the middle of the Rockies in Colorado this year, I felt that we just had to make the effort to do it. That initial plan grew arms and legs and now we are at an eight week tour taking in the eastern rally in Pennsylvania too!

I have even shipped my own bike over to do it on. If I had know just how much hassle the two of us were going to be put through it would have stayed here! Unbelievable! In spite of planning it down to the last detail, just about everything that could go wrong with that shipment has gone wrong. First the paperwork was found to be incorrect - at Friday 5 o'clock, the day before it was due to be put on the boat! Then we were told 'a placard fell off the container so the container didn't get loaded' -yeah, right. I believe that a placard 'fell off ' as much as I believe in the tooth fairy and Santa! So it went on the next boat, a week later than planned but still within our time scale to get it to Chicago.

Customs randomly select a ship and then randomly select a container to do a VACIS scan (a kind of X-Ray where they can check the whole container). You guess it! Out of all the containers they could have picked, they chose the one with my bike in it! You just couldn't make it up! As of right now, we believe it has cleared customs and is on it's way to Chicago by truck.

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Comments

[Ric]

As a member of the NGW club, I want to wish you a great and safe adventure. Thank you for all of your advice and encouragement while working on my 78, I really appreciate it!