Yesterday was "ship the bike" day.
It took about seven hours to get through all the steps between getting the bike out of the hostel (tricky to get it back out into the street with the full luggage load from being parked in the back court yard) to returning by taxi in the evening.
There was no real stress involved though since the people that I came into contact with were all very helpful and friendly. The agent that was doing the shipping was very friendly too and really all I had to do was spend most of the day waiting around in various places - They did all the worrying for me :)
The bike was handled well while I was there too. It was loaded onto forklifts twice in order to get it up onto the loading platform and then again to weigh it in on the scales (285Kg fully loaded - that's 50Kg more bike and gear than Marie´s KLR650!). There was also a police inspection of the luggage but it wasn't too thorough (not that I had anything to hide) .
So at around 6pm in the evening I walked away from the airport with my helmet in my hand and no motorbike. It was quite a strange feeling after the last five months with the bike as a constant companion. It was just as strange this morning, waking up at the hostel and seeing a blank space in the back court yard where there was no bike.
I catch a flight myself this evening and I guess I´ll see if the bike has made it through the trip without damage when I try to go through the Panama version of the "waiting game" to get the bike through customs there - probably on Thursday morning.
