Canada pt. 3
Monday, June 26
We crossed the U.S./Canada border on Saturday night at about 2 a.m. We were
concerned that the customs people would have us there for hours, as we were
crossing with a large van pulling a full trailer. Mikey has a horror story about
being held up at the border for six hours while the first line of The Royal
Canadian Difficultiness Unit tore apart the van in which he was travelling, and
eventually confiscated thousands of dollars, which were not returned for three
weeks. We decided to cross in the middle of the night, hoping that whoever we
had to deal with would be too tired to give us any real trouble. It turned out to not be that bad. They didn't even search the trailer. We had
to hang out in the customs office for a couple of hours, but were not sweated by
anyone. This was probably due to the fact that we were preceded by a couple of
drunk and annoying Australian girls, as well as a shady-looking guy from Pomona,
CA. I think they turned the shady guy back, probably because he was wearing a
shirt for World Wrestling Federation superstar The Rock rather than Big Sho or
Chris Jericho or any other of the many Canadian professional wrestlers. I
noticed that the guy had some truly ridiculous facial hair, so I let him bum a
cigarette and sparked up conversation about wrestling, which eventually led to
me asking if I could take a picture under the pretense that I liked his
shirt.
The Australian girls were really interested in us. They had forgotten to
bring their passports to cross the border, so they sent their two
shirts-tucked-into-shorts guys (either Americans or Canadians) back to the house
or hotel or wherever they were staying to fetch them. The second the guys
stepped out of the building, the girls began with the questions. Where were we
from? What were we doing? What were our names? We gave them fake names, the
funniest of which, an undying classic, came from Jade: "Hugh. Hugh G. Rection."
I don't think they got it. We told them that we were a roving pack of gays,
hoping it would cause them to lose interest, but it did the opposite.
Some of us resorted to looking at displays in the customs office to avoid
talking. One wall was covered with pictures drawn by elementary-school kids who
had come for a field trip. Most of the artwork featured would-be smugglers
getting busted with drugs or illegal endangered-animal products. Examples of
such products were featured in a glass case in the middle of the lobby.
Specimens included various ivory baubles, a walrus-tooth pipe, crocodile chowder
and an actual bear gall bladder (quite disgusting).