Tuesday 22 November 2011

Motorcycle Blues


I find ranting can be a bit insufferable and tedious, so I planned never to do it in this blog. But it has been almost two years since my motorcycles arrived and I have yet to (legally) turn a wheel on either one of them on a public road. I am almost past despair and into hopeless apathy, but while I still can get a good head of steam up about this, I’m going to let fly. It may get a little insufferable and tedious.

For the most part, I deal with bureaucracy in a fairly sanguine manner, never really getting in a flap over anything. Twenty years as a lawyer has even taught me to enjoy it a little, like a frustrating game or puzzle that you have to figure out. But I am taxed. Taxed to the limit.

In Canada, public servants tend to be a largely neutral group who will reflect back any surliness in spades. They are often officious, but generally you can get whatever business you need transacted with persistence, preparedness and polite determination.

American bureaucrats are a different breed. They tend to be quite the picture of petty tyrants, and sometimes no amount of groveling gets you the information or piece of paper that you need.

British bureaucrats, in my limited experience so far, are extremely cheerful and earnestly striving for competence. But there is an ominous, almost imperceptible feeling of hopelessness that pervades any public endeavour, and it’s almost like the expectation is that it simply won’t work, no matter what we do.

I have two motorcycles. The motorcycles arrived in this country on February 19th, 2010, after which I set out to go ride them. First task was to get them registered, licensed and insured. I assembled the paperwork: insurance was required before I could get the registration. After about 30 lengthy phone calls to insurers, and innumerable websites visited,, it was determined that I could not insure either motorcycle because I was not licensed to ride them. Apparently the grace of being allowed to drive for twelve months after arrival on my Oregon driving license did not extend to the bikes and I had to go through the entire 3 or 4 level testing procedures in order to get the top level bike license that would allow me to ride the 700cc and 750cc bikes I own.

After several hundred pounds, a couple of Saturday classes and several trips to the DSA (practical test agency) and DVLA (theory test agency), I now possess a full, unlimited, ride anything I want anywhere I want, UK motorcycle license.

Bonus, so I call and get insurance on the Hawk. On to the next piece of paper: I need the customs forms. No problem, I go through the moving papers. No customs forms. What??! My limited knowledge here tells me that those bikes came in a sealed container, beyond a big fence, and someone had to show someone something official to get them released through the import centre and onto the truck that hauled them to me, no? They must have forgotten to give me the piece of paper.

Phone calls to the movers in Portland sent me to the consolidators in St. Louis, on to the guys in New York that shipped them, who in turn pointed me at the guys in Aylesbury who actually picked them up at the dock and brought them out to Tom’s Lane. OK, now we’re getting somewhere: talk to the nice lady out there and after three or four calls she tells me to talk directly to the logistics brokers who were in charge of clearing them though Customs. Meanwhile, I have been on the phone with Her Majesty’s Customs and Revenue myself to determine what is required to get this elusive C&E 388 for each bike.

After a few calls with the logistics people, I get the nice lady to forward the documentation to HMRC, which she does, and then gives me the direct e-mail address of the HMRC representative who is seized of the task of issuing the two forms. This wonderful man issues the GSX-R paperwork that very afternoon, and-get this-it slides through the mail slot in the front door promptly at 8:30 a.m. the next morning! Clearly both Canada Post and the USPS have something to learn here from the Royal Mail.

The Hawk C&E388 didn’t get issued because he couldn’t find the date on the title. This is odd, since the both titles are virtually identical forms from the State of Oregon. So I scan and send over some additional documents, translate the stupid American-style date from the title for him (“062705” or something meaningless like that), and he says fine, it’ll go out today. I hover over the letter slot for the next several days in anticipation, and…nothing.

Email correspondence with the nice man at HMRC (who is so responsive, and still sounds like he cares, and actually *gasp* apologizes to me) indicates that the C&E388 was in fact sent out to me on November 11th, and he has no idea what’s happened. The otherwise-efficient Royal Mail has apparently had an epic fail and so he now has to send out a duplicate one to the DVLA office of my choice. Haysoos H. Chreestos.

Stay tuned for the next installment.

Who is the Patron Saint of Lost Causes, again?

What is it that possesses an otherwise rational woman to futz around for over half an hour trying to re-thread a cheap plastic zipper on a storage bag that only cost five quid to begin with?

Is it because my ham-fisted husband (bless him) yanked it from its moorings on the very first pull? Before I’d even gotten to enjoy having the extra sheets safely and conveniently stowed beneath the bed?

Or is it some darker, more deep-seated neurosis, some artifact of my parents’ Depression-era “waste-not, want-not” philosophy? No, this is a serious question; how do you make the call when something needs tossing? I need a clear decision-tree approach, cause I’ve thrown out tons of stuff and then, not more than a week later, gone:”Oh, man; if only I’d kept that! I could really use it right now!” as I padded off to the store to buy a new…whatever it was.

Once I had this rubber ring that I was sure went to something. I kept it in a little catch-all doolie that I had above the sink for random stuff that needed to go elsewhere but not right now. It sat there for months. Finally, moving from the upper apartment to the lower one in my house in order to rent the upper suite, I tossed it. As I was unpacking in the new digs I found my beautiful vintage glass cookie jar, the lid to which was missing the (irreplaceable) large rubber washer that fitted it snugly to the jar. *sigh*

It is long past time for me to let go of stuff that does not serve me well. What do you think, gentle readers? (I love imagining having readers; that delusion I won’t let go of soon) Toss it out, or put the zipper back on track? Any suggestions for how to do that?

Saturday 12 November 2011

Poetry Corner

While looking out the window, and pondering my position
On what the world has come to, and the human condition;

I sometimes think we’re predators and am sometimes sure we're prey,
It changes with my state of mind, depending on the day.

M. Storbo © 2009