Just a line to determine if you both arrived home safely without having your golf club shafts bent out of shape, and to establish contact via this new medium of communication.

My last few hours were rather hectic as I had forgot that Yamaha closes at 3.30pm when I was planning that last day's trip back to the mainland.  I should have caught an earlier ferry; as it was, I arrived at 3.29 and the door was already locked, but fortunately Ross, the shipper-receiver, was still in the building when I rang the door bell. Unfortunately, he had not been told I was coming; hence, he did not have any movers on standby. [I'm positive I told that crew of 3 who work there, when I left with the pianos, that I would be back the following Monday afternoon; maybe they weren't listening].  Anyway, he called up their favourite movers, and only "John" was available (I have a suspicion that maybe he's the boss?); anyway, I was quite dubious how one other person besides myself was going to remove those pianos from their skids, because in all my previous visits, I knew that Ross does not help (it's not in his job description; also it appears he has a gimpy leg which could account for his reticence to be overly enthusiastic about helping).  Well, this John guy shows up in about 15 minutes and I queried him because I did not want dropped and damaged pianos or for him to hurt himself!  No problem he says and proceeded to prove it!  He lifted the tail of each piano by himself while I removed the dolly, the two of us rolled them off the truck into the  warehouse and the only time he asked me to actually lift was while hoisting the bass corner to put the leg on, which Ross did for us.  Needless to say I was quite impressed!!   Especially when I've seen 4 normal men who are unfamiliar with the procedure really strain to do what we did that afternoon.   Apparently whenever Tom, our Yamaha contact in B.C.,  has to take a normal size piano to a trade show or suchlike, he gets this John fellow and they do the whole bit themselves. After observing John in action with a concert grand I can well imagine him doing the same thing with a C3 while eating a peanut butter sandwich!

It wasn't until I was actually picking up all the moving pads that the thought hit me: what am I supposed to do with the skids? [the skids belong to Jim and I  -- Leslie]   I hadn't thought about it until then, and you two had not said anything, so I quickly made the decision to ship them back to myself [i.e., to Bill's house], which I did via Purolator courier.  I must say that since I started using them to ship the skids around it has been extremely hassle free. I simply called  their office from the truck rental office, and they came by the next day, and took care of the matter; they arrived in my driveway two days later without me ever signing anything or seeing a driver!  That' s what I call the way to do business, and so far, their prices have been competitive with those that Andrew had me using and in most cases better, without any fuss about the skids being too long.  [Because of their size, we've had trouble finding shippers willing to transport them -- Leslie].

So until I hear from A&K,  your skids are under our new living room addition in my new storage space.  I would also like you to check on whether or not A&K were charged for shipping the pianos to Vancouver from I am assuming Calgary and Edmonton, and if so how much (John was also interested in knowing how much).  I forgot to mention earlier in this letter that yes, I was able to arrive at the airport in time to catch the 7pm flight instead of the 9pm flight that I was booked on by Andrew, and I went stand by and got a window seat to boot!  The down side was that the man in the middle seat had a toddler with him that was really screaming at the top of his lungs off and on, which reminded me of  when our oldest son Steven had colic as  a baby.  The stewardess informed both  me by the window and the man by the aisle that we could move to the rear of the plane once we reached altitude if we so desired.  By the time we had reached that point we had talked to our young father as to why the child was in such distress, and discovered that the child had not had anything at all to eat or drink since 4.30 that afternoon; he was hungry! So why not feed the tyke?  He had been on call for a liver transplant for the last six months, and the call came through just that afternoon to bring the child to the U.of Alberta hospital ASAP.  We did not confer, but neither the isle passenger moved nor did I move, and I think the father appreciated the fact that we did not abandon him during that stressful time, as he had to put up with the child's screams, so why shouldn't we at least lend him some moral support?

This conversation has grown way beyond my original intent, so much so I had to call one of my sons to discover how to get the screen to scroll, something new I've learned; the bills for the trip I bundled and sent by snail mail to Andrew Kwan and his group of impressive companies (!), and it is almost time to leave for the airport to pick up our daughter returning from Japan.

I will be waiting with baited breath to discover if this letter actually finds its way to its proper destination.

By for now,

Bill