Guilty At The Border

*** continued from previous post ***

Somehow the hours slipped by - and I do mean hours, who the Hell knew Washington was this big? - and it was well past 5 PM by the time we reached the US - Canadian border.

We had now been on the road about 10 hours, and if you remember had experienced everything from snow to blistering heat to violent wind. Well, maybe not blistering, but damn hot for a couple of Western Washington folk. At this point I was MORE than ready to be at our hotel for the night, and your Mom, who, thank goodness, had either stopped hallucinating or learned how to hide the fact, was ready as well.

We had one more gauntlet to run however. Canadian customs. (Cue dramatic dun-dun-DUN! music! Or, considering we were entering Canada, dun-dun-DUN-eh? music.)

Back in the day, (What the hell does that mean anyway? Really. That's a weak descriptor of a point in time if ever I heard one. You don't hear "Back in the year", or "Back in the decade", now do you? No. And why? It sounds silly, that's why).

Anyway, back in the dim past crossing the border was as easy as coming to a full stop and answering one question: "Where are you going, and how long are you going to stay?"

I guess that's two questions, but it was usually slurred together (you had to pass the time in those booths as best you could, and alcohol is a quick cure), so you get my drift. Sometimes you didn't even have to stop, they would wave you right through. 911, as it changed so much in our society, changed everything at the border. Suddenly, Canada was actually a foreign country. Who knew?

Now crossing is a bit of an ordeal, but we were prepared. Coming here was a great excuse for us to finally get passports. Mom was itching to use them for the first time. I was less enthusiastic. It had been quite a while since I had crossed over into Canada, and I'd never been to this particular border crossing - and never on a two-wheeled spaceship - so I had no idea of what to expect.

What we found was a small, two-lane road with a booth in the middle that could have been serving ice cream as easily as permission to cross into an alien land. How small? Our bathroom is larger than this entire station. Here was the thin blue - or red, or paisley - line separating the "Huh?'s", from the "Eh?"'s. Still, I felt some butterflies flit in my stomach as we rolled up to the window. Even though we had nothing to hide, it felt like we did. Know what I mean?
Yes I was guilty.

Guilty of being an American.

*** the journey continues tomorrow ***