Hope for the Best, plan for the worst!

 Hope for the Best, plan for the worst!

Ready to Ship

This year we re-committed ourselves to travelling back through parts of Europe on our bike. Westjet's BikeAir program was not well founded at the beginning but in June seemed to have found it's feet. We found reasonably priced premium Economy seats, chose Rome as the destination as Barcelona/Spain doesn't honour the EU temporary permit for moto's for leisure purposes. We wanted to avoid as much of the high tourist season and high heat temperatures. 

Plan for the Worst

We knew that Westjet would fly the bike from Vancouver as well as Calgary with a small surcharge but since we had family to visit we decided to truck the bike to Calgary and visit family in advance. That worked great and a benefit was my son-in-law came to the cargo drop-off and I got a picture with the bike after the customs clearance was given for it.

Next day, was flight day, our premium economy seats came with priority boarding passes and we were through Calgary security in record time and seated at the gate. There on the tarmac was our bike,

On the tarmac

now strapped to a handling platform and we actually saw it being loaded. Every other time we've shipped that all happened in the background. Wish I could have seen in in 2011 go through the Panama canal.

loading into the Hold

Boarding was efficient and we sat down to be greeted by Heather who offered us a wine spritzer. After last year with Air Canada we thought we must be sitting in Business class. The remaining service for the flight duration continued to be a business class experience.  and an on time arrival. Yeah! Westjet.

Part of planning means to consider the range of outcomes that could happen versus the best case scenario. We felt we needed to address Italian inefficiency by planning for something going sideways. That meant we wanted to address Jetlag, and customs clearance or damage to the bike in some capacity. Our own customs clearance was the fastest yet and we had changed our 1st night hotel to be closer and serviced by a shuttle just in case something happened. Everything went to plan and we checked in were in our room and received our verification call from World Flight Services (WFS) that the bike was now at Cargo City ready for pick up. Now AMC had cautioned it could take 4-6 hrs. to be ready for customs clearance. Expecting a chance of late arrival and a 6 hr window would have put it at customs closing of 6 pm on Friday. Now I wanted to make sure Customs for cargo was open Saturday and both WFS and the ADM (Customs website said it was open Saturday 8 am to 1pm.. So I confirmed with WFS that I would be in at 9 am Saturday. He said "Perfect", and I thought I can't believe this working out as best case. Because of the variables we had purchased our motorcycle insurance to start on the Saturday so even if we could have got there Friday Customs wouldn't have cleared the bike without an insurance policy in force.

Saturday the worst not first of August

Knowing our experience with jetlag we expected to be up early and ready for breakfast and to catch the 8:20 am shuttle back to the airport. Instead we woke up at 7:55 am got sort of ready, ran down, changed the shuttle until 9:00 am, had a quick breakfast and headed off. Fortunately an Australian/Sardinian lady sat beside me as I showed the driver the address I needed to go to. He told her he would show me where to catch that shuttle but he couldn't go there. When I disembarked his shuttle he saw the airport shuttle that travelled to Cargo City, some 5kms from the terminals, and stopped it and told the driver where I needed to go. I was there in record time. I thought well, the sleep in and early rush wasn't a problem as I'm on track. Boy was I wrong.

Cargo Customs security was helpful and the WFS info got them pointing me in the right direction, unfortunately WFS while giving me Ingresso 4 Room 25, for the paper work failed in their email info to mention they were on the 2nd flr. In the EU, grd floors are 0 our 1, our 2nd floor is their 1, and our 3rd is their 2nd.  I knew that and since the grd floor didn't have rooms it had cargo bay #'s I thought perhaps that what he meant. In any event I did get directed to the 1st floor where a helpful fellow told me they were in Rm 25 down the hall called BCUBE. I went down there and no one was in as most of the offices were closed being a Saturday. I found him again, and in the interim he found out that the AWB # reflected WFS instead of BCUBE and he walked me to the 2nd floor Rm 25 where WFS was located. Quickly I got my paperwork stamped, paid and they directed me to go the ADM for the Customs clearance done and then return to Xpress to get the crate brought out with the bike.

When I got to ADM 2nd floor I walked down until an office dr was open but the agent there was on the phone and he motioned me to the 2nd office door open. I went in there and in broken English after looking at papers he happened back saying 'not possible' Monday return. I questioned this and he said "Feesh (fish) fresh vebgitables'  and waved the Italian 'fini; hand sign. He motioned me off.

So back to WFS to question this and Yuri said he would come with me.

We went back to ADM and talked to the 1st guy who waved me off earlier. He gave the same answer, "Feesh. vegbtables". Now Yuri was clearly invested in not accepting this as they are familiar with ADM policy for Saturday mornings. So after a lot of back and forth and the agent saying he could do it if a supervisor was there to approve it , but one wasn't he said Monday. That's when I said "no transport" no hotel, must be in Caserta", he finally looked around the room and finally agreed. Since I knew from dealing with Stefan Knopf before to be prepared with document copies the moment he wanted something I had a copy for him and then fed him a copy of each document I knew was needed. Yuri said after that being prepared and making it simpler for him, was what stopped him from being lazy.

Anyway another 1/2 hr ensued in getting paper cleared by the Xpress Box and my bike was brought out. What should have been 1 to 1 1/4 hrs became over 3hrs. but I had the bike, started up and drove back to the hotel to load up and check out. Then put the GPS in place and apparently going though security at the airports it had reset all the GPS settings. I had to drive to our 2nd hotel which we preferred by memory and then finally got it working correctly. Whew what a day's work which just shouldn't have been that difficult. Now I know what Stefan says when he says "they think they are 2nd to God". referring to customs agents.

Anyway, it confirmed the need to anticipate what could go wrong and plan for it.