USA! USA! USA!
Okay, I finally have some sort of internet running. So let's rewind till last week. Fred is now in Toronto visiting, and well, really just preventing me from studying. Who needs to study for a defense anyways? The actually defense day went by without a hitch, and all that remained was to pack up, make like a tree, and leaf...errr leave? (I don't know how that one's suppose to go...maybe it's got something to do with the Maple Leafs)
Anyways, we had two days to correct my thesis and print it up - this was the easy part. We also had to finish packing. Fortunately, thanks to some dilligent work the week prior, we were almost there! And we had Fred to help.
Um, help.
Now's it's Nov 30th, elevator and loading dock is booked for 1:00pm and we've got a sweet, sweet Uhaul ride already to go. It even had an Alien painted on it and everything.
We're running perfectly on schedule, and should be able to head for the border around 3:00pm. Grave mistake #1: apparently "reserving" an elevator means nothing these days. Some idiots before us had overstayed their elevator time by a whopping one and a half hours, setting everyone else behind schedule. Of couse, a "domino effect" then proceeded to effect the rest of the days events (paper work and such at the university), ultimately setting our long drive back till 5:30pm. (Although you may not know Toronto, if you live in any major city, you know that leaving the downtown core at 5:30pm on a week day, is a grave mistake...grave enough to name this Grave mistake #2).
6:30pm, I think we've cleared Toronto. ~30km travelled and ~2400km to go. *use your best Red Leader voice here* "Almost there....Almost there"
10:30pm. Sarnia-Port Huron crossing. Grave mistake #3. Perhaps the Gravest of them all: Crossing into the USA was the most worrying part of the trip for me, as I was suppose to get my TN visa at the border (TN was part of the NAFTA agreement). You can do this ahead of time if you drive down to the border, or you can supposedly just show so long as you had the appropriate paper work. So, to make a super long and painful story short, here's the brief.
-I've read the pertinent online Visa info carefully, and have a letter from my Univeristy stating I've graduated, a letter for my job from my future boss on Univeristy letter head, my valid canadian passport, and cash in US dollars..I can do this!
-I should have suspected things would not go well, when the border crossing guy (in the super friendly way they're trained to be) says "you're going to apply for a TN visa now?! That's risky, what if you get rejected." <- deliberately left out the question mark, cause he somehow made this question sound like a statement of fact that I would get rejected. -We're in the office now, and we got some guy looking over my letter, he has some issues with the wording, and generally looks confused. He goes into talk to his supervisor, and after a short period of time of more confused looks, he says that some things in the letter weren't appropriately stated, but he'd do the visa anyways. Yes! We're in. *This is where Grave Mistake #3 is actually born* In the middle of my paper work, he gets called away from the desk, and tell us he's going to have another agent finish the work. In comes agent #2. I can only assume that agent #2 just broke up with her boyfriend, had her dog recently die, and paper cut herself in the office twice...only momments prior to helping me with my forms. She takes a look at the letter, again, then goes and talks to the supervisor, again. Only this time the conversation is short...after this, it was "Mr. Lee, I am rejecting your application and sending you back to Canada...if you try to cross at another border, I'll hunt you down myself" *okay, the second part of that quote might now be exact* Finger prints, and mugshot later we're back in the truck going to Sarnia. (the least they could have done was given me back the $2 I spent on the toll bridge). I didn't want to go the USA anyways. -Well, we're in the USA now, so obviously I managed to get thing straigtened out. We pulled over to the Holiday inn right by the bridge to the USA where the staff were super-duper friendly. As soon as we asked if we could have something faxed to their main desk, they asked "border troubles?" Apparently they get this everyday. Thankfully my new boss works late, as he rewrote the letter with some minor wording changes, faxed it to us, and back to the same border guys again. -12:01am. No fingerprints, no mugshot, heck they didn't even check our truck. 36 more hours till Fort Collins! The next 36 hours were actually as boring as watching paint dry in comparison to the fiasco that was the previous 3 hours. As planned, we hauled @ss through Michigan, Inidana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado. BTW, the "worlds largest truck stop" in Iowa...really not that impressive.
Next update should hopefully have some pics of Fort Collins. I'll leave you with pictures of deleriousness kicking in somewhere in Nebraska or Wyoming. I can't remember which. -EL
Anyways, we had two days to correct my thesis and print it up - this was the easy part. We also had to finish packing. Fortunately, thanks to some dilligent work the week prior, we were almost there! And we had Fred to help.
Um, help.
Now's it's Nov 30th, elevator and loading dock is booked for 1:00pm and we've got a sweet, sweet Uhaul ride already to go. It even had an Alien painted on it and everything.
We're running perfectly on schedule, and should be able to head for the border around 3:00pm. Grave mistake #1: apparently "reserving" an elevator means nothing these days. Some idiots before us had overstayed their elevator time by a whopping one and a half hours, setting everyone else behind schedule. Of couse, a "domino effect" then proceeded to effect the rest of the days events (paper work and such at the university), ultimately setting our long drive back till 5:30pm. (Although you may not know Toronto, if you live in any major city, you know that leaving the downtown core at 5:30pm on a week day, is a grave mistake...grave enough to name this Grave mistake #2).
6:30pm, I think we've cleared Toronto. ~30km travelled and ~2400km to go. *use your best Red Leader voice here* "Almost there....Almost there"
10:30pm. Sarnia-Port Huron crossing. Grave mistake #3. Perhaps the Gravest of them all: Crossing into the USA was the most worrying part of the trip for me, as I was suppose to get my TN visa at the border (TN was part of the NAFTA agreement). You can do this ahead of time if you drive down to the border, or you can supposedly just show so long as you had the appropriate paper work. So, to make a super long and painful story short, here's the brief.
-I've read the pertinent online Visa info carefully, and have a letter from my Univeristy stating I've graduated, a letter for my job from my future boss on Univeristy letter head, my valid canadian passport, and cash in US dollars..I can do this!
-I should have suspected things would not go well, when the border crossing guy (in the super friendly way they're trained to be) says "you're going to apply for a TN visa now?! That's risky, what if you get rejected." <- deliberately left out the question mark, cause he somehow made this question sound like a statement of fact that I would get rejected. -We're in the office now, and we got some guy looking over my letter, he has some issues with the wording, and generally looks confused. He goes into talk to his supervisor, and after a short period of time of more confused looks, he says that some things in the letter weren't appropriately stated, but he'd do the visa anyways. Yes! We're in. *This is where Grave Mistake #3 is actually born* In the middle of my paper work, he gets called away from the desk, and tell us he's going to have another agent finish the work. In comes agent #2. I can only assume that agent #2 just broke up with her boyfriend, had her dog recently die, and paper cut herself in the office twice...only momments prior to helping me with my forms. She takes a look at the letter, again, then goes and talks to the supervisor, again. Only this time the conversation is short...after this, it was "Mr. Lee, I am rejecting your application and sending you back to Canada...if you try to cross at another border, I'll hunt you down myself" *okay, the second part of that quote might now be exact* Finger prints, and mugshot later we're back in the truck going to Sarnia. (the least they could have done was given me back the $2 I spent on the toll bridge). I didn't want to go the USA anyways. -Well, we're in the USA now, so obviously I managed to get thing straigtened out. We pulled over to the Holiday inn right by the bridge to the USA where the staff were super-duper friendly. As soon as we asked if we could have something faxed to their main desk, they asked "border troubles?" Apparently they get this everyday. Thankfully my new boss works late, as he rewrote the letter with some minor wording changes, faxed it to us, and back to the same border guys again. -12:01am. No fingerprints, no mugshot, heck they didn't even check our truck. 36 more hours till Fort Collins! The next 36 hours were actually as boring as watching paint dry in comparison to the fiasco that was the previous 3 hours. As planned, we hauled @ss through Michigan, Inidana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado. BTW, the "worlds largest truck stop" in Iowa...really not that impressive.
Next update should hopefully have some pics of Fort Collins. I'll leave you with pictures of deleriousness kicking in somewhere in Nebraska or Wyoming. I can't remember which. -EL
posted by Ernest, Kelly and Mateo @ 7:54 AM
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