Reuniting with Maggie

Whilst in New York we received the news that Maggie was due to arrive in Seattle port on New Year’s Day. We spent New Year’s Eve at our friend Claire’s apartment in Vancouver, pretending that we were real people who don’t live out of a car! Due to the no work nature of New Year’s Day followed by the weekend, we caught the bus to Seattle on Sunday afternoon ready to tackle customs and port authorities first thing Monday morning.
We walked down to the customs office in town only to be told we were in the wrong spot and that we needed to head to the field office. We were given directions and told it was about a mile and a half walk. I don’t think the American sized lady who divulged this information has ever done much walking. About FIVE miles later we reached the US customs field office. Here is where the confusion began. There seems to be a system in place when in comes to collecting your cargo, but it also seems to be a case of ‘too many cooks’. Over the next few days we dealt not only with US customs and the port authority, but with our shipping company from Mongolia, the actual shipping line and then some other affiliate of the shipping line, all without receiving concrete information on how the process works. It also turns out (and this actually makes sense when you think about it) you cannot just enter the port and drive the vehicle out of the container in the same manner that we drove it into the container in Mongolia. Security is a little more of a thing in America. Instead we needed to arrange trucking company, with full port security clearance, to enter the port and collect our container. This same company would then have to return the container to the port. The next issue was getting Maggie out of the container that is now sitting quite high up on the back of a lorry. Option one-find a crane to lower the container to the ground, drive the car out, use the crane to put the container back on the lorry. A logistical nightmare and probably cost an arm and three legs! Option two-find a ramp that the lorry can back on to so we can retrieve Maggie. We actually seriously considered this. A few days were spent exploring the junkyards by the port looking for something that might work. Finally a much more viable option three came to light-use a flatbed tow truck to back up to to the container on the lorry, winch Maggie out and then tilt the bed to lower her to the ground. Easy. Now who could do this for us? We had already spoken to a large number of companies that were either not keen to help someone who wasn’t going to be a repeat customer, or who would help but charge a small fortune. On Thursday morning, four days into our mission, we were once again wandering around the port thinking of how we were going to do this, when Hayden spotted ‘Juan’s mobile truck repairs’. He figured that if anyone was going to know decent trucking companies it would be Juan. Sure enough Juan pointed us in the direction of Gary’s Towing. With the full belief that we are better in person we walked over to see what Gary and his team could do. I’ll mention now that at this stage the container still had not been released as it was on hold for a customs inspection. Our last ‘free day’ at the port was Friday, whereby we would be charged $100 day everyday after that including weekends and despite the fact that our ‘free days’ included no work days such as New Year’s Day. Add to the fact that we were told that no one knew when this inspection would take place as they possibly had a back log from the Christmas/ New Year holiday period. Anyway, back to Gary’s Towing. A few staff at Gary’s had port clearance and we came up with the idea that one of them would go into the port to retrieve Maggie by unloading her onto their flatbed, drive out of the port where we would meet them to then lower her to the ground to drive away. Great plan. We were told that when we got the all clear from the port to give them a call and things can proceed. About an hour after leaving Gary’s, an hour spent stressing about how long the inspection would take, an hour spent constantly refreshing the status page on the port website, the ‘container available for collection’ column changed from a red ‘no’ to a green ‘yes’. Game time! We quickly made our way back to the hostel to collect the five gallon Jerry can and car battery that we had stashed under the bed. Perhaps you want to know why we had stashed such items. For obvious reasons you cannot ship a car full of fuel and because the Chinese have been a bit funny about shipping cars since the Tianjin Port explosion, you cannot ship the batteries either. Even to the most idiotic of people, these two things are crucial to the car working. The hostel phoned a taxi for us and I phoned Gary’s towing to ensure that they would be ready. With a quick stop in the taxi to fill the Jerry can we were at Gary’s towing hardly able to believe that we were about to get Maggie back. Hubie was our designated driver and we jumped in his truck and headed to the port. Hayden and I clearly do not have port clearance but were allowed to enter on the proviso that we stay in the truck. There was still some debate over whether we would be allowed to unload Maggie in the port despite it making perfect sense as it eliminates the need for the container to be removed only to be returned again. We were told to pull to the side and wait for the boss. Sure enough, one has to follow the full port procedure of removing the entire container. Hubie got straight on the phone to work something out. We arrived back at Gary’s towing and arrangements were made with a trucking company that they have a strong relationship with. Funnily enough it was one of the companies that we had contacted already who had not been that keen to help. A deal was done but due to the time of day no action could be taken until the morning as the port was closing. A fairly happy ending to the day considering that in the morning we were facing a budget blowing set of expenses!
The morning came and we were at Gary’s Towing at 8am waiting for our container. She arrived at about 8:20 and by about 8:45, courtesy of Hayden’s hard work unstrapping her at record speed, Maggie was on the ground! New battery in, enough fuel in the tank to get us around the corner to the fuel station, some handshakes and big thanks, and we were on the road in a puff of non-conforming diesel smoke! Our customs ordeal was not over as we still had to get the official paperwork all rubber stamped. We drove to the field office for our third visit and actually got a smile and a laugh from the customs guy. He came outside, did a lap around the car, kicked a tyre and went back inside to complete the paperwork. He did not require any of the documents that we had prepared, just filled out his one piece of paper and handed it to us with a smile and well wishes.
Before I go in to detail surrounding our next hurdle, I’ll take a break from car talk and give a rundown on what else we did in Seattle besides hang around the port. We were blessed with some decent weather and walked around the gardens under the Space Needle on our way to Lake Union where there is a ‘Centre of Wooden Boats’ that is located on a barge. I enjoyed the sun and Hayden enjoyed the wooden boats. We wandered through Pike Place market, even venturing down the sweet smelling alley to the ‘chewing gum wall’ which requires no further description. We ate crab using crab crackers and drank coffee from the very first Starbucks, which actually tasted ok even though we were really only there for the wifi. We went for dinner with our lovely hostel room mates and tried to stay out of the way of the exorbitant number of homeless people. It’s a lovely city but I was disappointed to find there is no such place as Seattle Grace Hospital, I feel let down by Grey’s Anatomy.
It turns out that retrieving Maggie from her container was the easy part. Insurance was fast becoming our Achilles heal. Having been told by others who have done virtually the same trip as us that you just need to phone particular insurance firms upon arrival in the U.S and go from there. I’d rather not go into boring details, but let’s just say that these firms have clearly changed their policies and after phoning no less that 10 insurance firms we still had no insurance. Hayden even phoned the police, figuring that they would be the ones to get us trouble so we may as well see what they have to say. Whilst the kind sergeant could obviously not sell us insurance, and it’s not like he is going to write us a note to excuse us from having insurance in the same fashion that a parent writes a note to excuse their child from school. He did however express shock and the situation and told us that whilst he does not condone it, plenty of people illegally drive without insurance and informed us of the potential consequences, enabling us to make an informed decision about whether we choose to drive or not. In the end, we didn’t have to ponder this for long as we found what we were after in the form of a very helpful insurance lady named Christina. She figured that seeing as she has managed to provide car insurance to a homeless man, she surely could work some magic for us. And she did. At a slightly higher cost but worth every penny to be properly covered. Time to hit the road!