Chief Arrives

This won't be news to almost anyone but Flathead Rob but we launched a half-baked plan to ship the Chief to the Great North West without out Rob's knowledge about 3 weeks ago. The idea was to surprise him for his birthday. His next birthday is one of those critical decade benchmarks.

I had to research and select a shipping company without Rob's input. I couldn't be happier with the one I selected. Because I was doing this on Rob's behalf with an insane deadline they endured a lot of obsessive micro-management from me. Mary Lou was incredibly patient and professional.

Here's the old girl getting ready for her trip.



In total it took about two weeks to have the bike shipped door-to-door. That meant there was a good chunk of time that I had to continue pretending she was sitting securely in my garage and be very careful what I said to Rob. I tried to stockpile a few pictures and post ideas for this here blog to help the rouse along. I knew he'd eventually ask me some question where I'd need to walk out to the garage to check something for him. I decided early I'd just have to be quick to lie when that happened. The most memorable? A question about the distributor. "Oh, yeah... I just looked at that the other day. It looks just fine."

I invited Rob's friend Nate to receive the Chief at the other end of it's journey, at Nate's parent's house near Rob's no less. Nate ended up also picking my up at the airport the same day it arrived. I'm becoming quite the tactless, pushy MF in my old age...

Once both the Chief & I arrived in Nate's parent's garage Nate & Rob's wife Lynn fabricated a story that Nate's Dad's Road King fell on Nate's Pan and he needed a urgent hand lifting bikes and assessing carnage. By the time we sprung the surprise on Rob there where enough loose ends over the two weeks that he had some unframed suspicions. By-in-large though, we got him.




I confessed my lie about the distributor in the garage. Rob follows up.



HUGE thanks to Lynn, Nate, Nate's family, our Dad, our Mom, Mary Lou, English Stephen, Tyler, Lizzard, Nikki and everyone else that helped out. We couldn't have done it without you.