Bienvenue au Canada

[Note--I only recently got access to the web; I am organizing and dumping blog entries I've been keeping locally on my hard drive. Bear with me here.]

The drive from Boston to Ontario was... well.. pretty damn sucky. First, there was a moderately late start (10:30 AM). I ended up having a relaxing lunch and stroll in Lenox, MA (western edge; dropping off a friend at a yoga retreat). Traffic on I-90 through New York was jammed up around Albany due to an accident. I came up with an almost clever way to get around the jam. Almost clever, because I missed the exit, in a chunk of New York where exits are 15 miles apart. Half an hour later, I was back where I started to backtrack. Ugh. Then, I got caught in dumping rainstorms across New York. Speedometer slowly crept down: 75... 65... 55.. 45... yeah, that's a safe speed for these conditions. I knew there was a car ahead of me due to seeing the taillights; I figure if they went into the ditch, I'd have... well.. no real warning.

Crossing the border went mostly without incident; I ended up heading across at Queenston-Lewiston, north of Buffalo (my old boss’ recommendation—his home town in Toronto, and he crosses that border all the time). Went over at around 11 PM on Friday night--not much of a line; getting interrogated by the customs and immigration agents was a little bit unnerving, but they didn’t search my car or anything.

One thing that I found amusing: they are geared up pretty solidly—external body armor, all black uniforms, duty belts. But one of the items on the duty belts was a pouch that holds their customs stamp. Yes, I know, this makes a lot of sense (considering how often they use it, and how they need to keep it secure), but it seems a bit incongruous among cuffs, mace, folding baton, radio, CPR shield, etc. But I just get this mental image of these guys have customs stamp quick-draw contests in the locker room.

During the drive, I got a call from the moving company—they could actually offload my stuff from the truck on Saturday (tomorrow), instead of having to wait through the weekend. This was great—it meant I only ended up spending 48 hours without my stuff. However, it also means I would have to get to the airport customs warehouse by 10 AM tomorrow. I decided to make a shorter drive of it—head straight to the airport and grab a hotel there, instead of driving to my new home and driving back out (~1 hour) in the morning. Ended up working on great—definitely worth $109 Canadian to me to get a decent night of sleep after a drive like that.