Jeez...Â* What a dick dance it was getting my glider in from Mexico. It
was flown in to Laredo, TX where the customs guy chatted with the pilot
for 30 minutes or so and, next day, we took off for Arizona. I received
a call during an over night stop in Ft. Stockton, TX saying I'd need to
come back to "clear customs".Â* Hell no!Â* We just flew through bad
weather and were not returning and the following two weeks of crappy
weather validated that decision.

In AZ, I tried customs and they had no idea what to do.Â* They just told
me to check in when I got back to New Mexico.Â* At Albuquerque they told
me I needed a customs broker and I needed to post bond! What???Â* The US
Customs regulations say there is no import duty on private aircraft.Â*
Still, they wouldn't talk to me unless I got a broker and posted bond.Â*
There was no broker in ABQ who had any idea what to do so I called
someone recommended by the Mexican company which I bought the glider
from.Â* He handled the paperwork for $125, but the bond cost somewhere
between $1,200 and $1,800!Â* The wonders of bureaucracy.

Oh, by the way, by the time this was all finished, the glider had been
inspected, issued a US Airworthiness Certificate, and had the new
N-number pasted on the side, and I'd been merrily flying it for quite a
while.Â* I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I simply ignored
Customs, but that would have been akin to ****ing on the Devil's boots.

On 12/25/2018 8:55 PM, Frank Whiteley wrote:
On Saturday, December 22, 2018 at 11:26:49 AM UTC-7, BobW wrote:
Warning!!! Intentional experiment of trying to intentionally 'drift a thread'
by 'cold-starting' an entirely new, similarly-named, one without simply
renaming one of the posts from the original one (which seems to cause some
RASidents heartburn). Don't like today's result? Whine to the Ruler of the WWW...
- - - - - -

Begin cut-n-paste from a completely separate thread...

Your fuzzy memory is correct about Hope. You picked up the Vancouver Soaring
Associations L-13 C-GZEU. Dearly loved and much missed by me - and many others
in the club. It was the first glider I ever flew in, I did my first solo and
also made my first flight as a licensed pilot in that ship too. She was
essentially timed out though as Transport Canada enforced the factory life
limits and getting an extension of 250 hours would have been financially
prohibitive. I remember coming out to the airport so you could pick her up.
Sorry to hear about the re-entry difficulty and I certainly wish the wing AD
hadn't grounded the L-13 a few years later.

I also remember being surprised that the guy who wrote a series of books that
I had read multiple times was one of the guys who came to collect the glider!

End cut-n-paste; begin thread drift...
- - - - - -

Here's (some of) "the rest of the story" regarding our being refused re-entry
into our home country of the USofA with your/VSA's freshly-purchased L-13.
Donning my caustic humor hat...

Our day had gone great - i.e. as-hoped/planned by Frank (the Boss) - right up
until we hit the border crossing, funky trailer now with even-funkier glider
(from a low-level bureaucratic honcho's perspective) atop, in tow. (For those
unfamiliar with that part of the US/Canadian border, there are 3 official
crossings within roughly a 30-mile E-W distance. Very convenient!) Frank had
lined up his paperwork ducks prior to hitting the road, spending considerable
time on grubermint websites researching/obtaining/filling-out the
documentation required for a gruberment-approved O&R border crossing with such
arcane '3rd-party hardware.' What could possibly go wrong? They made the
rules; he was following 'em.

My 'job' throughout the Road Trip was conversational ballast - and possibly
disaster alert alarm should I think Frank about to fall asleep and drive
across the barrow ditch into the weeds (I scream good!). Being 'steerage
ballast' perhaps saved us from a worse fate, as some serious tongue-biting
occurred on my side of the tow vehicle throughout our misadventure.

We arrived at the crossing - same one through which we'd entered Canada -
roughly change-of-shift time (mistake #1). Frank's
bureaucratic-interactional-approach was 'helpfully-questioning' (i.e. Here's
what we have; whaddayu wanna see in the way of paperwork?), as distinct from
'declarative' (e.g. Here's what we have in hardware; here's what your websites
say youse guys want us to have in the way of paperwork; feel free to give
these ducks your eyeball; thank you very much! Mistake #2 IMO.)

Whether due to perceived diffidence on Joe Driver's part or who knows what,
the functionary about to go off shift punted us to another functionary inside
the guard house (ruh roh). The first (also about to go off-shift) indoor
functionary said, "Go see my boss at that window, there." His presumably
low-level-managerial, behind-desk-sitting, functionary, boss said, "Wait here
a moment." Each interaction, of course, came at the end of yet-another plea
from the defendants. (Frank was up to three by then.) We wait a long
time...15 minutes? Presumably long enough for the most-recent functionary to
go off shift and safely escape the premises. The newest face says, from behind
the desk, "You'll need to come back tomorrow morning after 8AM; that sort of
approval can only be done when the 1st-team is here. And, you'll need to
find/pay a broker to have a prayer of successfully re-entering your home
country with that sort of cargo. And, and, you better do it at the main border
crossing, too." I can't remember if he made Frank state his plea a 4th time or
if he simply booted us on our way. Tactical retreat occurs; U-turn north.

While meandering toward the main (Interstate 5) border crossing to our west,
battle-assessment and future-campaign-planning occur. Neither of us are
inclined to RON in Canada, no disrespect to our Canadian neighbors intended.
Nor do either of us wish to enrich brokers, despite possibly removing candy
from kiddies' mouths. We're cheap glider pilots, after all, and have a (free!)
space on the floor of a fellow glider nut awaiting us somewhere near Seattle.
(Incidentally - at least until it got full dark - that part of BC and the
world proved geographically BEAUTIFUL!!! Just like I imagined from pictures,
but 'realer'!)

An hour or so later, in the latter stages of the gloaming, we park upstream of
the main crossing to plot final details of our border assault. Frank (the
Boss) has begun rumbling about 'broker-required being BS for so and so
reasons,' etc.; clearly he's done considerable homework and is becoming
peeved. I do my best to feed Frank's anti-bureaucratic-dander without
unhelpfully crossing over into Rantland. He's the Boss, after all. He elects
to wait until full dark, and 'try the declarative approach,' carefully
avoiding the word 'broker.' And - after an eye-rolling, skeptical, walk-around
of the trailer with no apparent smell of Canadian grass or anything else
nefarious triggering the guard's punt gene - we're given the equivalent of
"Just get this thing out of my sight before I change my mind," approval to
continue. That response came after yet-another Frank-declarative-foray along
the lines of, "Here (helpfully holding aloft a thick folder of paper)...take a
look at the rest of our documents your website said we'd need."

I think we racked out around midnight, sans supper. Just another normal glider
retrieve!

Bob W.

P.S. Border misadventure aside, Frank and I both appreciated the multi-party
help from VSA in inspecting and tying down your former baby onto the generic
trailer, so late in the (Sunday, as I recall) afternoon.

P.P.S. Further, it warms the cockles of every 'for-profit' author's heart
every time s/he learns of a(nother?) satisfied reader. Thank you - today's
checkmark for 'personal existence justified' placed in my mental log! And now,
time for some cheap spiced rum (kinda raw outdoors here, today)...

Bob W.

P.S. My involvement ended upon returning to our take-off port, so I'm unable
to provide further insight into C-GZEU's history.

---
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Frank here.

The REAL problem was, we had too much paperwork, which I handed to the US Customs at Sumas. One of the forms was for a commercial purchase, which triggered the entire broker argument. To their credit, a local broker was willing to meet the following and would handle the issue for a $50 fee.
We proceeded west to Blaine (home of the Peace Arch, Children of a Common Mothter) crossing and only presented the "private sale" concept. They didn't even want to look in the back of the pickup. The US customs buy looked the paperwork, looked at the glider on trailer, handed me back the documents, and said, as I lingered, "what are you waiting for?", and waved us through. Thanks again to then SSA State Governor Robert Wallach for putting us up for the night.

Frank Whiteley

--
Dan, 5J