Packing

Trevor and I are in Santiago again, ready to fly home. We did a lot of work preparing and packaging our bicycles to make them fit within the airline size restrictions. We felt rather good about ourselves until we got to the bus Terminal in Arica.
As Arica is a frontier city, we had to pass through customs again before getting on the bus to Santiago. While offering our bags for inspection, the agent asked us if our oddly shaped bags were bicycles, I replied that they´re luggage. "Are they bicycles?" He asks again. Yes, I reluctantly reply. 5,000 pesos ($12) each. What? Why?
"Bicycles are cargo, the busses don´t transport cargo, they transport luggage, luggage is clothing."
I was feeling a little indignant there. There were people who are checking through huge bags packed full of who-knows-what, bags much larger and heavier than our bicycle packages.
I went back and forth with the customs man a couple of times, pointing out the small size of the bags in relation to others, and each time he countered with, "Luggage is clothing, these are cargo!" He finally threatened that, should we wish it, the bicycles could be sent through a seperate company that could get the bicycles to Santiago three days after our flight and, that said company would happily charge us twice as much per bicycle. That, he advised, would be the proper channel for cargo.
I shut up for about 5 seconds, aware that arriving on time with our bicycles was an incredibly valuable aspect of our journey, but after those five seconds, I burst a little. As the man was walking away, I cried with all my marginalized-foreigner fury, "This is madness!" Without a pause he cried back, "This is Chile!"
We paid the 10,000 pesos for both bikes and are happy to be in Chile. I did tell Trevor that I want to get to the airport with plenty of time for ranting if they try to charge us extra for our bicycles simply because they´re bicycles and not because of their size or weight or anything of that sort.
I still feel a bit of what seems to be righteous indignation over the whole matter...perhaps I need to spend some time talking with God about it.

Our plans on returning to the states do not involve bicycling north right away. We´ll be met at the airport by my Dad and some friends and enjoy a couple of days in San Francisco. From there, Trev will be heading up to Newport, OR with Megan for a family reunion on the 22nd of June. I´ll stay in SF and spend Father´s Day with my Dad for the first time in several years, possibly doing a little work with him while there, and then join Trev and his family in Newport for a couple of days. After the reunion, Trev and I will return to SF to begin the journey back up the coast and expect to arrive around the third week of July.

Soon we´ll be back in our home country. Soon, Trevor and I will spend more time apart than we have in almost 8 months. As difficult as it has been at times, spending so much time together, I will most definitely miss it. We´ve gotten into eachother´s lives in such a good way and I´m a little sad when I think about living with so much distance between us. We are planning to get a place together after Trev gets back from India (did you not know he´s going to India for a couple of weeks in September?).

Anyway, off we go! Vroooooooooooom!
Will and Trev