It’s done

I didn’t hear from the DREAL today and as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I didn’t expect to. They’re on the hook and they’ll drag their feet for as long as they possibly can – I’ll probably not hear from them at all if I don’t contact them again first – because that’s the way the bureaucracy works here in France.

So I had to press on with getting my bike packed up ready to be collected and shipped back to the supplier. It was a long job, a full day’s work if I add together the time I put in yesterday and today, but I had to do a good job as the total weight is about 39 kg and I can’t take the risk that the parcel will fail in transit and I get the blame if the bike gets damaged.

I took photographs at every stage to show that the bike was in perfect condition beforehand, how it was packed and the form of the finished parcel. I’ll get the waybill stamped or signed by the driver when it’s collected and then it’ll be over to the shipping company to get it delivered safe and sound. The photographs show how things went.

I’ll be very sorry to see it go but I can’t spend any more time on the bike for now as I have a lot of other things to deal with, in particular my aircraft which are my biggest priority in the short term. The currency of both of them ran out at the end of last year and I had to renew and confirm the airworthiness of both on line the other evening, a process much more straightforward then the tortuous and expensive process that you have to go through in the UK which is totally unnecessary in my view.

But that’s old ground that I don’t intend to go over again. Right now my main priority is to get both cleaned, serviced and back up in the air and I’ll resume doing that as from Friday as tomorrow I have to water my new trees, which are all looking great, and go off to see my dentist who will deftly remove another small fortune from my wallet.