Update on Progress with Motorbike Shipping.

When I arrived in Israel I was not at all sure how I would be dealing with the motorbike now that Im ready to return home to Canada at the end of my ride. Things have clarified a bit since then so here is an update:

First off I have confirmed that it simply is not possible to sell the bike here in Israel. The current laws forbid importation of any vehicle that is more than 2 years old or less than 30 years old (ie they will only allow importation of latest technology or vintage cars)... My bike is 12 years old so that kills that idea right there.
And its also not an option to just "dump" the bike here in Israel and fly myself home accepting the bike as a write-off... Id have all sorts of problems at the air-port as I tried to leave if the bike had not been officially exported before I leave :)

So that simplifies things a bit... I am now committed to shipping the bike out of Israel, and the only destination I am considering is home to Canada :)
But I could ship by air or sea. I rode the couple of hundred Km from Jerusalem to the port city of Haifa in hopes of finding a suitable logistics company to help me. I ended up getting a suitable contact through a web listing for a moto-shipping company and it looks like Im going to go with that contact.
I also made a couple of enquiries about air freight but as expected for a very long flight with three separate legs, the air-freight costs look to be about double the cost of sea freight so that's out of the question at present too.
But its pretty expensive to ship by sea too and Im pretty sure that Ill end up breaking even or losing money at the end of the day when I finally get rid of the bike... Bummer but that's how it is and its what I committed to when I decided to ride the bike north.
But the shipping company recommended that I get the bike crated up by someone else since it was going to cost me about $1000 to have them do it for me. So Ive spent a couple of days running around trying to find a carpentry place to build me a big box... I found one and planned the box and we have a cut-list of materials but its going to cost me about $700 just for the box!... and then there will be about $1400 for the brokerage and shipping at this end... And then there will be more money ($400+) to be spent at the receiving end in Vancouver.

But it all seems to be under control now and Im getting things organized... The only remaining challenge is that I happen to be trying to do this right in the middle of Jewish holiday season... there was Yom Kippur last week which pretty well shut everything down for a couple of days and then as of tomorrow there is another longer holiday session that shuts everything down for about 10 consecutive days!!!
... Good thing I don't fly out till the end of the month and it should all work out OK.

So now Im left with trying to figure out what to do with 10 days of national holiday... I really don't think there is that much to do here in Israel (since Im not really into bars and clubs and other urban activities... At this stage I plan to do a tour over to Jordan to see Petra but that will only occupy a 2-3 days... then Ill probably just be twiddling thumbs till I ship the bike out on about 21st.

So that's the status of things at the moment...