Personal anecdote time!
So, Hubby and I have moved out of the boonies, into the less boony area of Minneapolis/ St. Paul. We had a lovely housewarming party last night (wine and cheese and Firefly, oh my. I’m glad we finally had an opportunity to get rid of the leftover wine from the wedding). This morning, we had to get up in the way-too-earlies to go Washington to see my baby sister graduate.
Or at least, that was the plan. We fly stand-by, so it’s always a little hit-or-miss what time, where, or even if we’re coming in. Initially, we were supposed to fly to Seattle, but that looked as if we weren’t going to make it on time, so while we were at the airport, we switched to go to Vancouver, BC (no problem for us, because we have passports) which is actually closer to our final destination. As we’re getting on the plane, I call my family, and tell them that we need to get picked up at Vancouver. No problem, says my father, I’ll send your sister. I hang up, and turn the phone off.
3 hours later, after a nice flight, but nothing to write home about, we’re in Vancouver. We cannot find our sister, so we turn on our phones to pay the billions of dollars that international cell phone charges cost.
Sister says “Slight problem”.
“What’s that?” we ask.
“No one has any passports, and they won’t let us over the border.” Turns out, as of June 1, no one, absolutely no one gets over the border with just a driver’s license and a birth certificate. Go figure.
That is problem. So, no one can pick us up. My credit card is maxed, Hubby’s card has barely anything on it at all. We try to go rent a car. Not enough money on our cards. I get my mom’s number. They’re not taking it without her being there. Okay, we’ll take the bus. Well, to get to the Greyhound, we have to get on the city bus. The city bus costs two dollars Canadian. We don’t have an American penny between the two of us, and since we were both starving, we had to get food, and now Hubby’s card has even less on it. Not that it matters, the bus doesn’t take credit card anyway. The pizza was very good.
We’re stumped, and out of options. But there’s a flight going back to Minneapolis, but only one more that we have any chance in hell of getting on, and it leaves…..holy shit, we have to get through customs.
Canadians are very nice people. They let us skip ahead of them to get through security so we could get to the plane on time (between that, and running, we were just in time to hear the second boarding call!) The nice attendants, after hearing our tale of woe, bump us up to first class. (And let me tell you, first class is DEFINITELY the way to travel.)
So now, we are back to our apartment, exhausted, and had a very unproductive day, and I shan’t be able to see my baby sister graduate. But, we have a story to tell, and I don’t have too many of those, and we’re back where we have some staples in the fridge, and parents-in-law to mooch off of.
So how was your day?
My day was pretty uneventful. I know there was an arts festival about 10 miles up the highway from where I live – but there’s not enough money in the bank account (don’t even get me started on maxed out credit cards), and I really needed to spend some time getting some yard work taken care of. If nothing else, the weeds in the dog pen are now cleared out, and we now have a better idea of where to dig to remove the previous tenants’ poorly constructed brick “patio” (we live in some university housing for faculty, but the university does squat to maintain anything – so we’re pretty much on our own if we want the place to look and function a bit less ghetto than it does).
I’m also getting more comfortable with skipping the annual California trip – even with the extra summer courses I’m teaching, I don’t think I’ll have enough left over after paying down debts from last year’s trip (didn’t teach summer courses last year and didn’t budget for $4.50 per gallon gas), along with a few other emergencies that always seem to happen right when there’s no effing way to pay for them. If nothing else, will be able to buy school clothes for the kids and perhaps be positioned to get by until next year’s tax return check. I’ll still miss the coast though.
My cousin got caught by that trap almost 4 years ago now. Apparently when they were still batting the passport idea around, one of the border guards decided to start enforcing it, forcing my cousin to remain in Vancouver a few extra days while his mom found and FedExed his passport. Could you imagine how awful it would have been if he didn’t have one?
The passport thing is just ridiculous. The US- Canada relationship is about as peaceful as it gets. And I can’t believe it’s easier to forge a birth certificate over a passport.
I had a bagel.
…
It was very nice.
Oh, and I agree about the passport thing being ridiculous, but I’ve also never quite understood why birth certificates are considered identification at all. My birth certificate is just a piece of paper with an imprinted seal ($5, K-Mart) saying that someone was born in Texas.
*Shrugs* Got me Violet. Maybe it’s because you can get a driver’s license if you’re not an American citizen? So, you need the two of them; one to say you are who you are, and another to say your an American.
In Europe you can just cross most of the borders willy-nilly. I was actually terrified when I went from France to Italy and nobody so much as glanced at my passport, nor wanted to. I thought that I had clearly missed some office somewhere, that I was now in Italy illegally or something. And I’ve been detained at the Canuckistani border before. Mostly a long boring process where they learn that you really are the americano tourist schmuck that you appear to and claim to be.
In other news, nothing of interest happened today. I continually fail in my quest to master pyrokinesis. Apparently no shit will be blown up with my mind yet. Oh cruel fate.
TRH
Antigone: I suppose that makes sense, except you can bring in a birth certificate and social security card to get a driver’s license. Neither has a photo. Of course, the ID card bootstrapping process has to start somewhere.
I actually remember driving to Montreal once with some friends, one of whom is actually a UK citizen here on a green card. We eventually convinced the surly French-Canadian border guard that we were all just stupid Americans, but he was definitely not happy about her lack of a passport. (I, however, was thrilled by her attempts to speak in a pure Texan accent, rather than the Texan-British accent she usually sports).
Note to Americans travelling to Canada: we will let you in without a passport. It’s your government that won’t let you back across.
Yeah, Bird’s right. It wasn’t getting in, it was getting out.
Canada has no land borders with any country other than America. This would imply that there is something we’re trying to KEEP there, some otherworldly horror which must never be allowed to escape, some wicked beast of ages and eon’s long gone by which the Canadians bravely hold entombed, never to escape.
I smell a summer blockbuster action movie coming on.
TRH