Things conspire to piss me off, or I might never know how old and cranky I become.
It was supposed to be a flight of two, with a hot little number, why, the pictures alone something to hang on to in dribbly dotage, but her insurance (bastardos!) nixed it, though not before I called Rick all expansive- Yo, send everything, let’s stock the pharmacy, no end of room here…just send it!
They did.
It took some winnowing to get to this, featuring Bruce Swift’s elegant loaner VHF radio in the near ground- try it out this week, and set it up for the NOVA boat later this month:
It was a lot, but it fit, more or less. In the clinches, I wound up stuffing the baggage compartment pretty much by eye- run out of space way before reaching the 130 lb. limit, right? I left 5 of the 15 boxes of flagyl on the hangar floor. Maybe there’ll be a trych outbreak; otherwise, we’re OK.
That was Wednesday night, and time for bed.
Too much coffee, elderly prostate? Hell no! I spent way too long looking up at the ceiling, thinking of Gordon, and Eddie, and JackL…shoot, I’m going to have to pull that crap out of there and weigh it, or put up with COPA condescension.
160 lbs!
All the flagyl is on the deck now, they’ll just have to suffer this month.
All went well enough, then, til I got down here.
Where the guy I ran over roughshod a couple months ago was back with reinforcements, this time looking altogether frightening in his black Tonton Macoute shades, and they let me know the party is over, unpack all 45 boxes, carry them into the customs office, where they cut every individual box open, them nor me too happy about it, but no money’ll change hands now, you sonovabitch.
They made a move to keep the box of ceftazadime- how did they know it was the most expensive item?
I re-used my refrigeration ploy. They didn’t believe it this time, either, but it allowed both sides to retreat with face.
Here’s the system:
There’s just the one runway- 10- 28, and no taxiways. Two exits- one for the big terminal, one for the little.
The big airport has customs and immigration, and the little airport, accessed by 1.3 mile back taxi, is where small planes must tie down. Impossible to process people there, they say.
So you have to park on the big tarmac, give them $100 in Immigration for your after hours arrival (the weekend is after hours) and fill out your gendec, and then unpack the plane, carry everything in- they don’t have carts, since they are used to big air traffic- get it all ripped open and messy, hard to carry and repack, carry it back out, reload the plane- restarting used to be a problem, but the customs piece takes 2 hours now, so that avoids the inconvenient hotstart issue- taxi to the small airport, and unpack it again, tie down and go take a damned nap.
Fortunately, it’s Carnival, so they cancelled the GI clinic today and tomorrow, though they neglected to mention that to me- everybody knows how Carnival is- now I have time to rest up, and vent.
Feel better already.
A little.
