Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Elves and More 2008


I wanted to give everyone an update on the arrival of our bikes. Everyone’s heard of the freighter out in San Francisco that bumped into the San Francisco Bay Bridge, spilling all that oil? Here is a picture of it:



An approximately 100-foot gash stretches along the hull of the [Hanjin] Cosco Busan in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday. The cargo ship spilled 58,000 gallons of oil into the water Wednesday after it struck a support on the Bay Bridge.


I wish this was a bad joke but that ship was supposed to be heading to Shanghai to pick up the containers of OUR bicycles and returning to the States on Monday November 19. However, because of the damage, that ship is now out of service for the year.

The folks who we’ve ordered our bikes with in Houston (The founder of Elves & More down there) have been scrambling (and sweating bullets) to find another ship to bring the bikes back to the States, and have now arranged for another shipment, but at somewhat later dates.
Right now we expect to have all of our bikes loaded on a ship that sails November 23. That will put those bicycles in our hands on/about December 16. This will ultimately affect that nice and tidy schedule that I sent out last week. We are now making plans on what the new dates will be and I will keep updating the website here: http://www.elvesandmoreneo.org/volunteer.html to reflect the changes that we make. All things point to a delivery date on the 23rd and a build/load on the 22nd. Again, this is not final yet but one thing is for sure, building on the 15th is certainly out of the question.
None of this is optimal of course, but it is what it is. It's one of the hazards of trying to squeeze the manufacture and shipping into the timeframe when we have BOTH the build-space and the money.

In the meantime, if anyone has any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

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