Driving to Canada Hurts

Holy jesus am I tired. Getting to Canada has been a marathon on top of a triathlon on top of a decathlon while wearing ice skates and a lead suit.

We did the drive in two days, stopping in Oregon for a couple of nights to let the kids (and me) enjoy a crate-free day. It'd have been better to spend a week between legs of the trip - the second one almost killed me.

We left Bend at 9:15am and didn't get to Port Coquitlam until almost 11pm. The entire goddamn state of Washington had endless, bumper-to-bumper traffic, without any reason. No accidents, no fifty-car pileups, just a bunch of slow Sunday-driving turds flushed onto the roadways all at the same time.

Then we got to the border. For over an hour we crawled slowly toward the checkpoint where we expected the car to be thoroughly inspected and all our paperwork closely examined. Not so much.

At the first checkpoint we were waived through without a glance from the burly dude in black kevlar. At the second checkpoint, a lovely recent high school graduate politely asked us if we had any firearms, gifts for Canadians or more than $10K in cash with us. She never looked past our passports or asked about pets, booze, drugs or plants/vegetables.

Once past her checkpoint, we had to go inside so I could get a visa/work permit/visitor permit - I'm not sure which one I'm supposed to have and they don't seem to know either, but after a relaxing 20-minute wait, I got a pretty piece of official paper stapled into my passport and we were on our way.

We tried to sleep that night, but the cats were wigged out, meowling through the house as if to ask Where the hell is our shit? Where the hell are we? Why the hell did you hold us captive in that car for over 13 hours?

Overall, it was a day I'd never ever like to repeat. Not until they build a bridge over the state of Washington so I never have to sit through that bullshit again.