January 13, 2005
Every year in October, you travel to Canada to purchase this year's Polaris snowmobile. You do this because the exchange rate saves you quite a few bucks. Although you receive clearance from Customs, to register your new snowmobile in Michigan, you must provide a Certificate of Origin, since it was purchased in another country. This is available upon request from the dealer you bought the sled from at the time of purchase. You only need to remember to ask for it.
Every year, you wait until the day before you first decide to travel back to Canada to go riding for the first time in the season before deciding to register your snowmobile. You get to hang onto that ninety dollars that much longer. Every year, when you trail down to the Secretary of State to register your sled, you are unable to do so because you do not have the original C of O as required.
I spend several hours on the phone to the dealership in Canada getting this straightened out. You do not like to talk to them on the phone because they speak with a strong French Canadian accent. It is apparently acceptable to give them several thousand dollars every year and go snowmobiling with the owner of the dealership but God forbid you should talk to them on the phone any other time.
After I receive a scanned copy of the C of O emailed from the nice guy with the French Canadian accent that passes for original C of O with a little creative copying, you then complain because the line at the Secretary of State is so long at this time of the day and you have to sneak to the Secretary of State in the next town, since no way will the local one believe you made it that far up in Canada and back in this amount of time.
This happens every single damn year.
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