Don't trust the Mounties, EH

Really, they may seem all harmless and friendly and Canadian...but they're not to be trusted.

I'm speaking from experience.

They stole my ID.

And this is after they held me at the border for at least 30 minutes, searching my rental car. I guess they thought I might be sketchy since I attempted to cross the border in a rental car with a temporary tag from Oklahoma, an Arizona driver's license, no birth certificate, and claiming I drove up from Oregon. I guess I can see where they might be on alert there, but really, my story was so elaborate that if I were lying it would be painfully obvious. If I was going to lie, I would have made it as simple as possible to AVOID such suspicion. At any rate, they made sit in a waiting room while they searched my car and my bags. And then the guy came in with what looked like my rental car paperwork. I was relieved for a second, thinking they would finally let me go...until the Mounty spoke.

Mounty: "I found the rental agreement but it doesn't have your name on it.."

Me:"What? Look at the bottom. My signature should be on there."

Mounty: "Well it would be if your name was James Pickens!"

Me: "That must be the paperwork for the previous renter, then."

Mounty: (guffaws) "Well I'm just going to have to give Thrify Rental Car in Portland, OR a call..."

So I tried to explain to him what time I picked up the car and where I thought I had left the paperwork. He wasn't buying my story, but went back out to the car anyway. He came back 10 minutes later with my paperwork, essentially my ticket to roam freely in the Great White North.

By this time I was in tears. Not because I was afraid of the Canadians, or feeling little and vulnerable. But because I was EXHAUSTED. I had been travelling for over 12 hours and just wanted to rest. The last thing I needed was a Canadian border patrol agent getting saucy with me. Seriously, what kind of an idiot would I be if I tried to steal a rental car and drive it across the border.

I've got a whole other story about how I thought I was going to get shot for cutting soomeone off in traffic... until I remembered that they practice gun control in Canada.

in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark

It was just one of those things…those things that you KNOW you need to do that sort of hit you all of a sudden.

Which is how I realized that if I want to move to Portland, I can’t sit around and waste any more time. I’m going to say that it was Monday of last week when it hit me: I’ve got to start saving money. So its really a simple solution that for whatever reason I have failed to recognize until just recently. Or maybe its kind of like what happens when I decide I need a hair cut; there is no dancing around the issue. I wake up one morning and just KNOW…end of story.

And now that I think about it, a lot of the “bigger” decisions in my life have come about that way (moving to France, going to grad school, getting married…)

So now the real issue: being patient. So much of me just wants to pack up our stuff and go right now, no looking back. Can we do it in 6 months? Ready, set….go!