Je Fais des Choses Muettes

This past weekend The Wiff and I went on a little adventure in Canada. I had to go up to my company's office just outside of Montreal do run a training and she tagged along for the heck of it. Neither one of us had been to Montreal and so we figured this would be a nice little trip. Montreal is a beautiful city from what I understand and lord knows I could use some time away from Massachusetts. I had decided to drive up since taking a flight with the customs, flight delays, and airport traffic would have taken approximately as much time, give or take an hour. Plus, if I drove, I'd have my own car to bop around in once I got out of work. How sweet would that be? If I flew, I doubt the company would let me have a rental car (the office was quite close to the hotel).

The drive up on Thursday was, for the most part, uneventful. We zipped up through Vermont and made decent time. At the border crossing I showed why I have not chosen a life of crime. We pulled up to the checkpoint and stopped at the little sign that declared "ARRET!". Fine, I'll just wait here then shall I? The border guard waved us forward and I eased up to the little booth that is his center of power. I should mention now that I get super nervous around authority figures. I can't help but to imagine that this guy, if he so chose, could easily detain me and make my life a misery for the next several hours. I know intellectually that this will not happen (or shouldn't happen) but I see all the cameras and uniforms and automatic weapons on display and I freak out a bit. Suddenly in my head I am an international (Canada counts as international right?) master criminal and I have to do is slink past this one guard to gain my freedom and claim my rightful place in the annals famous thieves or whatever. Meanwhile in reality, I'm a fat guy in an old diesel Jetta.

The guard asked us a question in french and when I stared blankly at him, he switched effortlessly to english. I handed over our passports and he asked us some questions in slightly accented english. This was the exchange:

Border guard: "Where are do you live?"
Me: "Mark O'Malley."
Border guard: "..... What? Where's that?"
Me: "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you asked me my name."
Border guard: "No, I asked 'where are do you live?'"
Me: "We're going to Laval!"
Border guard: (moving on..) "Do you have any produce?"
Me: "I don't think so."
The Wiff: (desperately) "No! We don't have any produce!"
Border guard: "Are you bringing any gifts to anyone in Canada?"
Me: "Not that I know of."
The Wiff: "No! No gifts!"
Border guard: "Ok, thank you."

Yep. I am a smooth operator. Thank christ that the Wiff was with me because I could not for the life of me understand this guy. I cannot explain why since his english was better than mine. I just got all nervous and turned around by his, as you can plainly see, cryptic and misleading questions. God, I am a dope. So he just let us through and I still can't understand why exactly. I must cut such a non-threatening profile that he sized me up and thought, well even if he is a criminal or terrorist, there's no way he can successfully pull off a crime.

We got to the hotel in just under 6 hours (which includes me driving slowly, pee breaks, and the aforementioned border crossing). I was pretty damn tired, thank you very much. The next day I went and did the training (it went ok I guess. I can never really tell. When I'm in the moment during a training I always feel like it's going poorly and I'm losing the audience. After the trainings people seem to be happy and satisfied so maybe this is just me projecting my own bullshit). I came back to the hotel and we went to the hotel bar to have some food and drinks. We wanted to talk about our trip to Montreal and decide what we wanted to see and do. That was the idea anyway. I don't think we actually talked about it at all. And that, ladies and gentlepeoples is the problem. We are failures at "winging it". We can't do it.

The fact that the Wiff and I cannot just "wing it" on a vacation or even a short trip like this one became very clear to us back in January with our trip to Ireland. Sure, the weather fucked a lot of stuff up for us but for the most part what really messed that trip up was our own inability to actually decide on what the fuck we wanted to do. There was a lot of "we could do this and that" and "I dunno, what do you wanna do?" going on and what ultimately happens in that scenario is NOTHING. Nothing happens. We end up frustrated and bored while we sit in the hotel room. The problem this time was that we did not learn from the Ireland trip and did pretty much the same thing this time around. We don't need a vacation that is so rigorously planned that every minute of every day is accounted for but the willy-nilly-let's-just-see-what-comes-up approach doesn't work either. We need some structure with the option to change plans if the need or desire should arise.

On Saturday we slept in a little late and took our time getting ready. The TV news told us that Montreal would be in the mid-90's by noon and oh by the way, NASCAR as well as tens of thousands of fans are in town for a race that is taking place right in the heart of the city. Oh dear. Crowds + heat + unfamiliar area = super cranky Mark. After figuring out where the Metro station was and what stop we'd need to get off at we were all set to head out on our day trip. Then the Wiff called our own bluff. She said, "Would you rather just leave tonight and save the money? We could take a really scenic and round-about route and make that our adventure." Oh fuck yes, please. It was exactly what I wanted to do but I was too afraid that she'd get all mad at me if I suggested it. We promised each other that we'd come back to Montreal and have a plan of action. And we would stay in Montreal and not on the outskirts (the hotel and office are in Laval which is about 7 miles or so outside of the city. The hotel was situated on a major highway next to several strip malls which didn't exactly make for a lovely stroll).

And so we bailed on Montreal. I know, we're lame. We have admitted to this and are working towards a solution. Do not judge us. We drove away and made our long and meandering way home (including a 40+ mile misjudging of the highway system in Canada that eventually lead to a quick ferry ride across the St. Lawrence river). When we got to the U.S./Canada border (this time at New Hampshire) I was primed. I knew that the guard would be American and I'd be able to understand everything he asked me. I pulled up to the booth and sure enough I answered every question with flying colors. I was awesome. He dismissed us and sent us on our merry way. We had decided that we'd take Rt. 5 for a bit rather than jumping on Rt. 91 since Rt. 5 is a nice calm road with stuff to see and Rt. 91 is just a boring old interstate. I drove towards the Rt. 5 signs and there was a bit of confusion at this point. After stopping at a stop sign (which I have to admit I was glad did not yell "ARRET!" at me) near where we had just checked in, the GPS stopped working. That is to say, it stopped giving us directions and just showed us where we were, not where we'd like to go. I drove forward noting another U.S. Customs check-in point to my right but not thinking anything of it since we had just gone through all that. We drove by this and then suddenly the GPS woke up. It was indicating that we had missed our turn and that we should make a U-turn when possible. Ok, little electronic woman's voice. I shall do as you bid.

I turned the car around and passed the check-in point again. Soon I found myself with a choice. I could either go back up the hill from which we had just come or I could go down another little hill. Going down the little hill seemed to be the better choice as we both knew that going back up the other way would just take us to the border right? So down we went. At the bottom of the hill we were confronted with what was clearly a Canadian check-in point. "Oh dear," I said and turned the car around before getting to the border (or so I thought). As I made my way back up that hill I saw that written in large letters on the pavement were the words "Must Report To U.S. Customs". Oh fuck. As we approached the check-in I noticed a post office building and thought that it would be a good idea to pull in there and see if I can't figure out what the hell just happened. As I pulled in, a dude dressed in a black uniform came running out of the U.S. Customs building pointing at me and yelling "YOU! YOU! YOU! Stop!" Ah, fuck. This isn't going to be good.

He came running up to the car and yelled at me that I had to go through the check point. "B.b..but we just came–" I stammered. "YOU MUST GO THROUGH THIS CHECKPOINT!" he yelled again. Ok. You're the one who's armed here...you win. I pulled around to the booth and the another guy who was sitting in there said "What was that all about? Are you the guy who pulled into the post office?" I said that yes it was me. I tried in vain to explain what had happened when he said "But you came up the hill. Did you check in with the Canadians?" I explained that I had not as I had turned around when I realized my error and came back up the hill. "Then you just entered Canada illegally. They probably have your photo and information and are looking for you right now. You may have a big problem if you try to enter Canada in the future." I'm sorry, what? Dudley Do-right is after me? "What should I do?" I asked. He suggested that I go back down the hill and explain what happened and "if they let you go" we should then come back up to him to check in. All I heard was "IF THEY LET YOU GO". It was rattling around in my head and blocking all other input as I took the passports back and drove the car back down that hill to the Canadian customs building and what surely would be a life sentence spent working in the maple syrup mines. There are huge veins of maple syrup running through this part of Canada and they're always looking for prisoners and slave labor to harvest it.

When we got there, the Canadian dude at the station could not have been nicer. We explained that we had been following the GPS and it got us all turned around. All we really wanted to do was to go home. That's it. He said that this area seemed to be a "Bermuda triangle of GPS". He said that we weren't the first people to do this and that yes, they had noticed our car turning around before the checkpoint but understood what we were doing and no, they were not looking for us. He told us to just go ahead and turn around but to "make sure we checked back in with the U.S. Customs people". So I turned around and headed back up the hill (again) and drove over to the U.S. checkpoint. This time the guy was a lot nicer to us. It was then that it occurred to me that if the Canadian dude has seen this kind of directional confusion before then this prick has also witnessed people innocently making this same error. So why were the U.S. guys such jack-offs? Why did they try to make me pee myself (only a little came out I think)? Why didn't they just let me explain what happened and figure out that it wasn't a real issue? Because they can, that's why. Something I did made them not want to make this easy on me and I suspect it was my pulling into the post office parking lot. That really made them mad. These guys need to smoke some weed and chill the frick out.

At this point all I wanted to do is go home. We made our way to the highway and got the fuck outta town. On the way home we stopped off at the New Hampshire state liquor store and got me some scotch. It was only through immense self control that I didn't just slam a shot right then and there in the parking lot. As soon as we got home I got into comfy clothes and poured myself a nice healthy glass. Mmmmmm, scotch.