/stuff/A Tent and a Bike
This blog entry was lost by my ISP and they did not recover it. A fairly complete copy existed on blog aggregators, but it may have lost formatting or links.
I finally got my tent. It got to customs about two weeks ago.
On Friday, I decided I finally had the time to go deal with it. I called customs, asked if they could arrange for it to be sent to the nearest Posti, but they said I had to come down to pick it up, since I had to pay some fees.
I should have known the whole "no tax" deal for having it send out of Canada was too good to be true. When I told my Finnish coworkers about this, they suggested that I should try not to pay, including various schemes. The most likely-sounding one involved keeping the receipt and arguing for at least the duties back when I take the tent back to Canada.
Getting to the customs office was a big pain in the arse. It's way far away, reasonably placed down by the harbour. No busses go anywhere near it. I plotted my route, caught the bus, walked a long way, lost confidence in where I thought it was, called my coworkers to make sure I was on the right track (I was) and kept walking. Got there. It ended up costing something like 47EUR (~75CAD). The long and the short is that it cost me the same or less than if I had bought it in Halifax when I almost did.
I also bought a used bike. 60EUR, used. It's got some major issues, and I think it sat out all winter with the previous owner never using it. But it's a proper mountain bike, and I think I can get it working muchos better with some lubricant and degreaser and some tools that I don't seem to have. :-) And I'm really out of shape. ugh.
