Travelling South

So, off went the container, closing a chapter in our lives, that being the shifting of our thinking to the materials and household goods now enroute to St. Croix. The movement had begun, since, for a month or so that container sat in our driveway, in varying stages of the packaging process, with both short and long-term goals in mind. The kitchen cabinets arrived, and they need a place to stay until I had the lower deck system of the container, and the loading of the Atlantic White cedar planking, had taken place.
I had milled this wood for shipment over the course of the Summer of 2005, our lament, the "Summer from Hell". We had already made final orders for the kitchen cabinets and the exterior doors and windows, so, once the container arrived, we hoped that everything else would arrive on-time to be packed away for the sea voyage from The Port of West Palm Beach to the container port on the South side of St. Croix.
First came the kitchen cabinets we had chosen from Home Depot, these were off-loaded and put into our barn for temporary storage. Then, little by painstaking little, I loaded the AW cedar, then the 4 X 8 foot sheets of homosote, 3/4" birch veneer cabinet-grade plywood, 1/2" pressure-treated plywood underlayment for the storm shutters, 2,500 feet of various sizes of PVC conduit for the electrical work, as well as all of my woodworking and electrician's tools, half of Debbie's kitchen implements, and on and on and on.... Until that fateful morning, and now the container was gone, in someone else's charge, until our arrival on St. Croix, November 1st! Well, in actuality we were out of touch with that 20 foot little gray puppy until we finally had it out of the Tropical Shipping / U.S. Customs clutches on November 15th!
Oursleves, we left for West Palm Beach and Miami bright and early the next morning, the 29th of October. We drove, with Pocket, our cat, for 12 hours that first day, reaching all the way to North Carolina by 6:00 PM. The next day we spent driving to Orlando, Florida; some would say a bit off-course, Orlando occupies Central Florida, what are we doing so far West? Remember here that Hurricane Wilma had just crossed over the area, fromWest to East, it came ashore in Naples, on the Western shore of Florida and, as it churned across the state, it flattened parts of Fort Lauderdale and Miami, Miami Airport had been hit by the storm, but remained open somehow. The residents of the area were not so lucky, power was out all over both cities, and the outlook was grim for their future.
We called ahead of our arrival to ascertain the condition of our Amerisuite Hotel and to ascertain if they were open for business. They were not; not by a long shot. We asked Amerisuites for and received confirmation for a stay in Orlando, away from the storm-ravaged area to the East and South.
The next morning we arrived at West Palm Beach and got rid of the Ford Van we drove down, as we were sending the car along to the Island, Tropical Shipping once again. This Ford Econoline van was once one of our own company trucks; actually it belonged Old Harbor Electric, Inc. We couldn't sell it in time for our trip so we took it with us!
From Tropical, we had to rent a car to complete the drive to Miami for our hotel, but was it open yet, or did we have to drive back to Orlando to get a motel room up there for the night (it was a 3 hour ride)? Debbie called ahead and they told her that they would definitely be open by early afternoon, or at least by 3:00 O'Clock, check-in time. We drove to the hotel, and we waited in the lobby, with chamber maids and other workers all dressed in Halloween costumes, afterall, it was October 31st, scurrying here and there. We both wondered how the employee's must have faced in the Hurricane's aftermath, but were still at work and ready to please.
With all the power outages in the area from West Palm beach through Ft. Lauderdale to Miami, the traffic lights were nonfunctional. If you heard about it, or saw it on the news, it was true. At every single traffic light we came to, the other drivers were all behaving with the utmost respect for one and other, allowing a flank of cars cross the intersection in a counter-clockwise manner, at roughly the same intervals as the timing of the traffic lights themselves when operational. I didn't see a single driver deviate from this behavior, and it was a truly amazing thing to be a part of and watch.
We stayed the night there in Miami and left the next day at noon. This flight was nonstop; lucky for the cat, who naturally hated the travel thing. On the drive down from Massachusetts he spent most of his time firmly wedged under the driver's seat in that van, barely room enough for his fluffy little body. He survived. with little harm done, we think, but who ever really knows for sure with cats?
On Island again, we rented a car until our van arrived, which we hoped would be soon. We got the van on the 10th of November, safe and sound but not without fanfare. We had a checklist of items which we needed to perform, before the van would ours again. Tropical Shipping has this laundry list of items, which I won't give you here, but it's a nine step process, all of them painstaking, boring and seemingly without relation to one another. I actually saw a person using carbon paper for the first time in years! I didn't know they still made it.
If I can remember the order in which we did this, you will have a concept of what we went through. First we went to Tropical Shipping, at the Container Port again, to get the "Bill of Lading" for our vehicle. From the BOL we had to pay what is called Excise Tax, more accurately a "Road Tax", of more or less $0.16 a pound, levied on every vehicle that comes ashore from anywhere else, other than the U.S. Territories of St. Thomas, St. John or Puerto Rico. This office, the Internal Revenue Bureau, was behind K-Mart, in the Sunny Isle Shopping Center, back to Sunny Isle!
We also needed auto insurance, compulsory, for the van; back to Gallows Bay and Marshall - Sterling Insurance - where Debbie'd had enough waiting and being ignored, and we stormed out. Back to Golden Rock and St. Croix Insurance, got that done. Then we had to get a permit, Department of Publc Safety (back home we call this the cop shop, around here , who knows?) just to move the vehicle. This moving permit was good for that one day only. This basically allowed you to drive your vehicle to a destination, which you must divulge to them, where it must sit until it is properly registered.
Back to Tropical Shipping where it took them 1-1/2 hours to process the deal, because they couldn't get the printer to work! We pay the freight for the ocean passage and it is off to the US Customs Service building.....
...where it would be determined where your vehicle and it's multitude of parts are / were manufactured. A 3.5% tarriff is assessed against the value of the vehicle, which you must pay if any part of your vehicle is manufactured outside the United States' borders. Our 2001 Ford E-150 van was made in Detroit,in the good ol' USA, in it's entirety! We were free, sort of.............. But, if there were any tarriffs to pay, they must be paid by personal check, cash, certified check, or money order. I don't think they would take IOU's, but to be honest I didn't ask. U.S. Customs had to stamp all of our documents to be released to us by Tropical Shipping. They stamped what needed to be stamped, released the vehicle and, finally, we drove the van to our new home in Estate St. John, where we parked it, still wearing it's Massachusetts license plates......
The next day, starting around ten in the morning; in an effort to make permanent the van's registration, we made trips to Christiansted, Sunny Isle, the Container Port, US Customs, Gallows Bay and traipsing all over tarnation, these activities ate most of that second day!
I arrive at the registry window which reads "Registration" at the Cop Shop Annex, I hand the nice lady my ream of papers, she does a few things, hands it to me and tells me we need to get a new title, which was next door at the Police Department. I walked over to the other building, and was given the new title in about three minutes, a new world's record? Back to the registration window and another line. I finish up there, again, and the lady says I must get a vehicle inspection and have this form stamped; I thought to myself, another line to wait in? However, the vehicle inspection department was very unintimidating, I presented the nice gentleman my registration form, which he took from me, hammered it with some kind of official stamp (presumably) ripped off a quick signature and handed it back to me. A complete inspection? I thought to myself, perhaps the reason I see so many cars and trucks on the road with broken tailight lenses and countless burnt-out brake light lamps? Back to the registration window, where she makes some notes, and hands the whole package back to me, including my new license plates! Just one more window and cashier and one more waiting line and I am free of this madness! It was three in the afternoon!