Lets rewind the tape and go back to the summer of 2011.
I had begun to pack our household goods as well as the few VW parts that I had planned to bring along. I had decided in favour of parking Billo in Washington DC even though there was a very generous offer by Salman to fly over and drive the car back to Texas where she would enjoy year round good weather and the TLC of a VW owner who misses his own VW (parked in Abbottabad). I had decided in favour of leaving Billo in Washington DC as the parking being offered was temperature controlled and very secure. It would also have given me an opportunity to drive a shorter distance from Toronto (compared to Texas) to bring her out in the summer and drive to shows.
We had planned to bring our stuff back to Pakistan in a 20 ft shipping container. We had our books that we brought with us when we moved to Canada. They were 86 boxes when we moved in 2007. However when I repacked all our books they added up to more than 150 boxes. I had also collected a 'small' quantity of VW parts over the last few years so they were going to take up some more space in the shipping container. I kept packing everything in boxes and kept storing them in the basement.
The deal with the shipping company was that they would send in the shipping container when i was ready with everything packed. The truck would bring the 20 ft container placed on a trailer and leave it at my place on a Friday. I would have all weekend to stuff it with the packed boxes and they'll come hook it up and drive off on Monday, send the container to the port and I'll receive it in Islamabad. It would cost me about $5000 for the door to door shipping.
The shipping container arrived at our door in September as per plan and we set out to work. I had prepared everything and had purchased wood etc to build partitions in the container so the boxes would remain secure during loading / unloading and while at sea.
I started loading the boxes in the container and by Saturday i had it figured that whatever we had would not fit in the 20 ft container.
Shipping containers come in two sizes..20 ft and 40 ft. There is a weight limit but it is something like 35000 kg or more so it wasn't critical. However whatever we intended to bring back with us would require about 25 ft of space. The only other option left was to get a 40 ft shipping container. I was in a very awkward situation with most of my household goods in a shipping container and some in the house. To give you an idea the head board and foot boards of the disassembled and packed bed, for example, were in the container while the sides and side tables were outside. Leaving things behind was ruled out as we required all of this stuff back in Pakistan when we would get a house and furniture etc. isn't exactly cheap here either. This left me with little or no negotiation room so I had to agree to the demand of more than $9000 for the 40 ft container.
Everything was removed from the 20ft container and packed in the 40 ft container. We were left with about 15 ft of empty space and I would still have to pay for it. It was then I decided to fill the void in the shipping container with Billo....
Billo was coming home with us!