The car arrived on Canadian soil, April 15th 2005 after a mere 11 days at sea. At first I thought this was an awfully short amount of time for shipping but then I realized: it’s on a boat out at sea. What were they going to do, stop for evenings and weekends?
She was cleared by Canada Customs, Agriculture Canada and was ready for shipping to Calgary by April 25th. The CR-X was Paid In Full on April 27th and by April 29th she was on a train headed from Vancouver to Calgary.
Because Allan had given me the VIN number I was able to track its progress across the Canadian Rockies via the shipping company's website otherwise the not-knowing would have been excruciating (not that it wasn't already, mind you). After a few short delays the train arrived without incident and when I called the shipping company I found out I was in for... you guessed it, more waiting. Waiting for the train to be dismantled and waiting for the vehicles to be off-loaded. Then waiting for final delivery... That could take up to a week, they said, but they said to check back on Thursday.
Fortunately, I worked about 10 minutes from their main lot, so at lunchtime on the Thursday, my fiance and I drove past the lot armed with my digital camera… just in case. I had my eyes peeled out the passenger’s window at one lot and she was driving and scoping out the lot to the left. All of a sudden she shrieked: “There it is!! I see it!! I see it!!” and I turned just in time to see a flash of ugly white wheel. We parked the car and walked down the street. I started snapping pictures, my heart pounding… there she was, a mere 50 feet away from me and I couldn’t do anything about it.
It was pure torture. I couldn’t stop smiling all the way thru lunch, and it was very hard to concentrate at work. My boss was nice enough to let me have the next day off so I could be there when the car arrived at Dieter's shop.
After work we went to the lot again to take some more pictures, and we were soon joined by some of my friends who had heard thru the grapevine that my car had arrived. So there are now about nine of us standing on the grass at the side of the road next to a chain-linked fence topped with barbed wire, staring at the back half of a Japanese CR-X and talking. Obviously security arrived within minutes, and after a brief conversation he said we could stay as long as we wanted but he couldn’t let us in or turn a blind eye if we carefully climbed the fence to get a better look. LOL
I left at nightfall and could barely sleep that night. I tossed and turned until about 3am when I finally dozed off.
Tomorrow, she would be mine...
After work we went to the lot again to take some more pictures, and we were soon joined by some of my friends who had heard thru the grapevine that my car had arrived. So there are now about nine of us standing on the grass at the side of the road next to a chain-linked fence topped with barbed wire, staring at the back half of a Japanese CR-X and talking. Obviously security arrived within minutes, and after a brief conversation he said we could stay as long as we wanted but he couldn’t let us in or turn a blind eye if we carefully climbed the fence to get a better look. LOL
I left at nightfall and could barely sleep that night. I tossed and turned until about 3am when I finally dozed off.
Tomorrow, she would be mine...
Remember, this blog was written in chronological order so, you will need to click OLDER POSTS to move forward in time, and click NEWER POSTS to go backwards.
No comments:
Post a Comment