We finally arrived in Vancouver Wednesday night—VERY late. Luckily, we had keys from Alana and she was willing to go home and let us pay the rent in the morning, as we had a little adventure on the way here and were not able to meet her at 8:00pm as planned.
We had stayed in Portland the night before, after a lovely dinner and visit with a friend of FireCat’s from his technology days. Christian (who now works at Intel) and his wife are from Corsica and they have two smart, well-mannered and personable young boys so we had a delightful evening with them all…good conversation and I love hearing that French accent.
The next morning we traded at Starbucks, then hit the road. We were lucky enough to get through Seattle just before 5:00pm without hitting too much traffic and thought we were doing fine. However, south of Bellingham a bit FireCat pulled over to the side of the road. I was talking to my mother on the phone so I thought he was being polite in stopping so I could finish the conversation before we crossed the border and couldn’t use our cell phones. However, I soon realized that he was jacking up the car. Uh oh.
Sure enough, we had a flat tire on the front right of the TradeMobile. This had not happened to FireCat since he bought the van last October so he didn’t know that whoever put those tires on must have done it with some electric tool. No matter what he tried—and he’s a pretty strong lion—he couldn’t get the lug bolts off.
After he gave up I called AAA and was hearing it would be an hour before they could get someone there, when a Washington State Emergency crew pulled up and offered help. They couldn’t get the lug bolts off either but the guy had a special tool that he tried and that worked. Yeah!
Next stop at the next exit was to get new tires because we didn’t trust the spare and didn’t want to deal with more problems in Canada. Luckily there was a WalMart there so we got by pretty cheap. However, it took two hours before the TradeMobile was ready to go again. At least we had time for some pizza while we waited because I was famished by this time.
Finally, we were on the road again and got to the border about 9:30pm. I had my computer on my lap looking at google earth for directions while the border agent asked FireCat a lot of routine questions about whether we were carrying firearms, etc. He answered no to everything except when the agent asked him whether we had over $10,000 in cash and FireCat said, “I wish.”
After all the questions the agent told us to pull into Stall A and go inside. Hmmm, never had to do that before. So we went in and the uniformed guy behind the counter had a bunch more questions to ask us, like where are you from, where are you going, what do you do for a living, where is this conference being held, how long will you be here, etc. Then he took our passports and told us to go have a seat.
After a while he called us back, returned the passports and said we were free to go. FireCat asked why this happened and the guy said that something about the way we answered the questions in the van were questionable to the outside officer so they wanted to run a background check on us, but everything looked fine.
Well, I told FireCat that no matter how much we wished for $10,000, I think the border agents prefer yes or no answers. FireCat, however, thinks we were targeted because—besides driving a van and coming in fairly late at night—my fancy laptop with a map glowing from it made them nervous. Whatever it was, I’m sure it’s comforting for the Canadians to know that America cares just as much about letting terrorists out of the U.S. as they do about letting them in. LOL
By the time we arrived, got some Canadian money and went to bed it was 12:30am and we had to be up for trading at 6:00am the next morning…but besides all that, we had a great visit with my Dad in Eureka on the way up and a beautiful drive through the redwoods and forests of Oregon and Washington. I’m hoping to do a few hikes and berry picking on the way back…and I’ll be sure and leave my laptop in its case the next time we cross the border.
We had stayed in Portland the night before, after a lovely dinner and visit with a friend of FireCat’s from his technology days. Christian (who now works at Intel) and his wife are from Corsica and they have two smart, well-mannered and personable young boys so we had a delightful evening with them all…good conversation and I love hearing that French accent.
The next morning we traded at Starbucks, then hit the road. We were lucky enough to get through Seattle just before 5:00pm without hitting too much traffic and thought we were doing fine. However, south of Bellingham a bit FireCat pulled over to the side of the road. I was talking to my mother on the phone so I thought he was being polite in stopping so I could finish the conversation before we crossed the border and couldn’t use our cell phones. However, I soon realized that he was jacking up the car. Uh oh.
Sure enough, we had a flat tire on the front right of the TradeMobile. This had not happened to FireCat since he bought the van last October so he didn’t know that whoever put those tires on must have done it with some electric tool. No matter what he tried—and he’s a pretty strong lion—he couldn’t get the lug bolts off.
After he gave up I called AAA and was hearing it would be an hour before they could get someone there, when a Washington State Emergency crew pulled up and offered help. They couldn’t get the lug bolts off either but the guy had a special tool that he tried and that worked. Yeah!
Next stop at the next exit was to get new tires because we didn’t trust the spare and didn’t want to deal with more problems in Canada. Luckily there was a WalMart there so we got by pretty cheap. However, it took two hours before the TradeMobile was ready to go again. At least we had time for some pizza while we waited because I was famished by this time.
Finally, we were on the road again and got to the border about 9:30pm. I had my computer on my lap looking at google earth for directions while the border agent asked FireCat a lot of routine questions about whether we were carrying firearms, etc. He answered no to everything except when the agent asked him whether we had over $10,000 in cash and FireCat said, “I wish.”
After all the questions the agent told us to pull into Stall A and go inside. Hmmm, never had to do that before. So we went in and the uniformed guy behind the counter had a bunch more questions to ask us, like where are you from, where are you going, what do you do for a living, where is this conference being held, how long will you be here, etc. Then he took our passports and told us to go have a seat.
After a while he called us back, returned the passports and said we were free to go. FireCat asked why this happened and the guy said that something about the way we answered the questions in the van were questionable to the outside officer so they wanted to run a background check on us, but everything looked fine.
Well, I told FireCat that no matter how much we wished for $10,000, I think the border agents prefer yes or no answers. FireCat, however, thinks we were targeted because—besides driving a van and coming in fairly late at night—my fancy laptop with a map glowing from it made them nervous. Whatever it was, I’m sure it’s comforting for the Canadians to know that America cares just as much about letting terrorists out of the U.S. as they do about letting them in. LOL
By the time we arrived, got some Canadian money and went to bed it was 12:30am and we had to be up for trading at 6:00am the next morning…but besides all that, we had a great visit with my Dad in Eureka on the way up and a beautiful drive through the redwoods and forests of Oregon and Washington. I’m hoping to do a few hikes and berry picking on the way back…and I’ll be sure and leave my laptop in its case the next time we cross the border.
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