Tuesday 21st August 2001, Freelton ON
Dirk and Cora were out at work all day so Theo and Alma kindly let us camp around their kitchen table today, while Brigid tried to get some more work done on the dreaded website. John and Theo tried to adjust the pre-load on the Triumph’s suspension, using a handbook clearly intended for the previous model. Meanwhile, Alma organised our laundry.
Brigid’s back had been giving trouble, so we booked an appointment with a local chiropractor, and John took the opportunity to have his back overhauled at the same time.
We picked up our e-mail, and found that John had finally received a settlement offer from Arbella. It seemed a derisory sum after all the money that he had had to pay out for the initial repair. It was somewhere around this time that Alma mentioned to Brigid that Theo had been fretting about the legal title of John’s new bike.
The main problem was that, because the bike was not actually registered to John, he might not be legally insured to ride it. Also, there was the small matter of the border guards. “It would be good if you could get a copy of that Title faxed over tonight. If I was approached by a couple, travelling together, on two bikes, one bought in Massachusetts, and one bought in Texas, I might ask to see the paperwork … and if the you handed me a hand-written Bill of Sale, I might just think that the bike was stolen. And then there is the guy who sold you the bike, do you trust him? This could make getting separated on the Interstate look like nothing …”
John and I looked at each other, and then at Theo. “What do we do? Split up at the border? What if Corbin doesn’t forward the Title?” “Oh, don’t worry about it, it’ll probably be fine”, says Theo.
Don’t worry about it! Are you NUTS?! We now had visions of being detained indefinitely at the Canadian border, the bikes confiscated, and Corbin rubbing his hands over John’s money, riding away into the sunset on his new Moto Guzzi!
Between us we composed a suitably contemptuous response to Arbella’s offer, and then it was time to make our way over to Dirk and Cora’s place.
Cora had cooked up a feast for us by the time we arrived. Theo was more or less ordered to stay for dinner – just as well, as there was enough food to feed a small army. We must remember to try barbequed sweet corn at home (15 mins in their husks, as far as I remember). After Theo left, we kept Dirk and Cora up far too late, I fear.