Iron wind has arrived
My outboard motor was delivered yesterday. I was excited to get it but somewhat disappointed upon it’s arrival. It was very poorly packed for shipping. I paid $250 for it on Ebay and another $70 for shipping. I thought that since that seller’s fee for shipping was $70 that they would at least do it right. I was wrong.
She took what appeared to be a used box and cut it down the side to make a flat piece of cardboard. She then wrapped it once around the motor and applied some duct tape to hold it fast. Then she took another tall, thin “used box”, and laid two pieces of styrofoam in the bottom to protect the skeg and propeller, and slid the motor down into the box in an upright position. And that was all the packing that was done. Nothing was put around the top of the motor or it’s controls at all. No bubble wrap, no foam, no padding, no wrinkled up newspaper, no old rags, no intelligence, no experience and certainly no goddamn common sense.
Luckily, the styrofoam did it’s job and protected the bottom end, but since the top only had two layers of worn down cardboard to protect it, that’s where the damage ocurred. The lever on the hood that controls the stop / start / slow / fast settings was bent and jammed into the hood frame and the knob that is mounted on the end of that lever was broken in two and made a tinkling sound as it fell out of the box and onto my floor during the unpacking process.
Oh sure. It’s insured. I could jump through all the post office hoops and see where that gets me but then it’d just be more time devoted to negative energy in my life. Since this is a mild aggrevation by comparison in all things zen, I’ll just deal with it. I’ll take it over to the marina and have the guy pop the top off of it, straighten out the linkage and buy a new handle. Prolly another $25 which is cheap compared to what other inconsiderations usually cost me.
