“Ey, ey?” and other notable Canadian quotes
15:28 on Saturday, July 17, 2004 • 5 responses
Greetings from lovely Winnipeg. From here I will begin wandering oot and aboot the Canadian province of Manitoba, camping among the elk and the tooks, ey. Maybe even elks sporting tooks. I’ve decided to take the scenic route home—the very scenic route—up through Minnesota and west through Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, then down the west coast to Santa Cruz. I’ll be stopping at Jasper and Banff National Parks to fish and camp, and the cities of Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland to see friends. When paired with my pre-wedding trip to Illinois from California, this will easily be the longest roadtrip I’ve ever taken—it should add about 11,000 miles (~17,700km) to my odometer. The wife is already back in California, slaving away at something I think she called work. I seem to have forgotten what that is.
It’s no secret that I love computers. For the last five weeks or so, though, life offline has proven quite enjoyable, and while I doubt my newfound ability to keep off the computer will sustain itself for very long once I return home, there’s definitely something to be said for an existence which doesn’t require a voltage of any kind. As many of you have perhaps noticed while I’ve been away, I’ve only been checking my email only about once or twice a week, and for at least a full week I didn’t touch my computer at all. The feeling has come back in my fingers, the spring has returned to my step (boing), and I find myself thinking more about tippet and bluegill than textual ontology and divs, spans, and metadata. It’s just like I’ve installed a major upgrade for my interface to the world. Everything seems snappier™.
I hate border crossings. I really do. I don’t mind going into Canada as much as I mind coming back into the US. I once pulled up to a customs booth in Vermont, where the customs officer greeted me with the query, “How many drugs do you have in the car today?” So began a 4-hour ordeal involving the removal of upholstery in my car, which ended with the explanation that I looked just like someone who had been stopped at that crossing just two weeks before. My response: ”we all do.”
This time on my way Canada I was asked to pull into a stall, where I assumed they would search my car, but they just asked me a few questions. It’s strange when they ask you questions—they stare at you, never blinking, presumably looking for facial twitches and other telltale signs that you might not answering truthfully. Given the extent of my er…squareness… it’s hard not to smile when they follow up a question about drugs and booze with one about artillery and hazardous materials. After the smile, they took my passport and told me to have a seat because they have to “run some checks.”
I’ve been to Canada many, many times (50?), but about the most illicit thing I’ve ever done in Canada was to purchase a used camera lens that I knew cost twice as much in the States, then file the paperwork for getting the Canadian VAT back in the mail. So I wonder what kind of “checks” they run. I imagine that they pull up my visits to provincial and national parks in Canada, and maybe satellite images of me fly fishing in Nova Scotia. They might find out that I got caught cheating on an English test in fifth grade, when I opened a book to look up a word I didn’t remember (coincidentally, it was then that I also found out what cheating was—I was a pretty naive fifth grader). As this guy ran the checks, I figured it was my turn to stare unblinkingly at him, searching for telltale signs that he found something juicy. Guess what? The fucker smiled before telling me I could leave.
I can only surmise that the customs officials in Canada perform their “checks” using Google, and that his results led him straight to the wit and sarcasm I used to post regularly here on etherfarm.
Damn it, I knew I shouldn’t have used my real name on this site.
Anyway, yet another post to say that I won’t be posting for a while, unless wireless access is readily available in the rural expanses of our northern neighbor (something I sincerely doubt… despite how cool and how large Winnipeg seems to be, I had to ask about 30 people until I found one who knew where I could get online).
p.s. Thanks to the dozens of you who wrote in and posted comments to offer well-wishes for the wedding, the marriage, and this trip. The wedding was exactly the wedding we wanted, and this trip is turning out similarly. More soon.
p.p.s. I’ve been wanting to post slightly larger images to etherfarm. Do the extra 50 pixels trip anyone up?
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