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Adventures in Border Crossing 2 – Cross Harder
Feb06
on February 6, 2010
at 2:51 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized
I was reminded of another border crossing tale of woe, this one much shorter and not as funny as yesterday’s. Â When I was about 12, I went to a youth rally in Detroit or Rochester Hills or some other place in Michigan. Â We went down with a friend from church driving and picked up her niece on our way from Kitchener to Windsor.
The van we were in was pretty much the best conveyance in which I have ever been conveyed. Â It was super-plush on the inside with four captains chairs (the rear ones reclined and swiveled) and a bench seat in the back that folded down into a bed. Â There was a TV and VCR, curtains, bells, whistles, partridges, pear trees, etc. etc. Â I think it belonged to a couple from our church who used it to do six-month road trips or something.
The problem at the border were manifold.  Our driver/chaperon was from Texas.  She had an Ontario driver’s license and had lived in Canada for many, many years, but was technically an American.  All of the kids in the van were Canadians and only one of them was related to her.  This difficulty was compounded by the fact that one of our number had not brought a birth certificate/letter from family authorizing this little jaunt.  The van also had Oklahoma license plates on it.  We were stuck at the border for about two hours and missed the entirety of the Friday night program of the youth rally and very nearly had to sleep in the rapidly-less-luxurious-when-contemplating-spending-the-night-in-it van, but fortunately our billet had waited around at the church building for us.
I don’t remember difficulties in re-crossing the border which is either a sign of my faulty memory or (and this is equally likely), the Canadians just waved us through after making sure we weren’t importing any oranges.
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A few years ago, Amy and I took a road trip down to Florida to visit Disneyworld and meet some of my Imaginary Friends (the term Amy coined for the people I know solely via the internet). Â We crossed the border at Buffalo at about 5:30am as we were driving a very, very long way and wanted to avoid some of the day’s heat in our un-airconditioned Toyota Echo.
Since we were Canadians, we barely slowed down through customs on our side of the border, paying only the bridge toll and receiving a friendly wave from the customs official. Â Canada customs gives a really good impression to most people who are coming into our country. Â They just seem to be happy to see you and they really want to know if you’ve got any fruit.
The yankee side of the bridge was a different story. Â It’s always the third degree: WHERE ARE YOU GOING. HOW LONG WILL YOU BE THERE. DO YOU HAVE GUNS. Â DO YOU HAVE ALCOHOL. DO YOU HAVE TOBACCO. DO YOU WANT SOME I HAVE SOME HERE.
Our guy was kind of annoyed. Â I’m not sure if that was due to living in Buffalo, him starting his shift really early in the morning or having worked all night. Â Hard to say. Â Likely all three. Â We stopped at the line marked ‘stop’ and I rolled down my wind for the interrogation.
“WHERE ARE YOU HEADED.”
“Florida”
“HOW LONG WILL YOU BE THERE.”
“About a week.”
“ARE YOU FLYING OR DRIVING.”
Now this took me a minute.  It hadn’t occurred to me that  people would drive across to Buffalo airport and fly to other parts of the US.  We actually did this in 2006 or 2007 to go to a wedding in Galveston, Texas.  At the time though, it took a whole lot of self control not to say “What does this look like, a Cessna?”  I answered “Driving” after giving him a look that, had the light been better, would have resulted in several hours of detainment and possible inclusion on the no-fly list at a bare minimum.
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