Today I woke up just after 7 AM to see that Boy Meets World was on TV. Uhm, if I had known that I would have been waking up at 7 AM allllll summer. I finished packing, uploaded some photos, and we were on our way to Canada!
The ride wasn't terribly exciting, just really pretty and filled with me trying to fall asleep with a cooler right next to me. My mom, dad, and I didn't really talk much because I think we were all really, really tired. We wound up making AMAZING time and the ride really flew by. We got to the border in about two and a half hours and stopped at some cute little restaurant for food. I got chocolate chip pancakes with vermont syrup and it was delish.
Then, shit got really interesting.
So, we're approaching the Canadian border and I'm thinking "Oh Man! We're going to be in Montreal in like two hours and I can go meet my new pals and start this amazing voyage!". We hand our passports to the dude, and he asks us to pull over. I'm thinking this is standard procedure and that everyone has to pull over to the left because there were a bunch of other cars there. False.
We get inside and we tell the customs officer about my trip and he seems really excited and nice. Then we sit down for about five minutes, relatively confused about why we're in there in the first place. The customs agent asks to speak to my dad, and then we remember:
My dad has been denied getting into Canada before because he has a criminal record. Woops.
So my mom starts crying and my dad is kind of arguing with the guy. He comes over and he's like "They're not fucking letting me in the country" which makes me have a minor heart attack. I'm wondering what the fuckkkkkkk we're going to do because there's not really a way to sneak him in. We tried arguing with the border people, because my dad hasn't been in trouble since he was 21 and he's 52 now, you'd think they would ease the fuck up. It definitely did not work, and the guys only suggestion was to drive all the way to Burlington, Vermont and send me on a bus to Montreal.
Fucking. Rude.
They tell us to drive around so we can pick up our passports. We drive around and my dad gets out of the car, "with an attitude", so my mom goes after him to stop him from creating a ruckus and winding up getting arrested. About a minute later, she knocks on my door with a massive smile. I'm thinking that maybe we convinced the dude to let us in, but it was way sweeter than that.
"The guy behind us got denied into Canada too and his daughter is doing semester at sea!"
Um, incredibly twist of fate?
I get out of the car to go introduce myself, and we get acquainted. Her name is Julie, and her brothers name is Bryan. Turns out they're from Standish, Maine which is only about a half an hour from my house. We start talking and realize that we're both work study kids who need to board the boat a day early. After a bit of deliberation and in the middle of line to get back into America, we realize it would be a lovely mixture of epic, zany, and crazy to just... carpool. So we did! After we got our passports back from U.S customs, we loaded Julie and Bryans stuff into my car and took my dads stuff out. We said our goodbyes and my dad and her dad headed for the states, while Julie, Bryan, my mom and I made our second attempt at getting into Canada. And it was a success!
We think that we're home free and we get to know each other during the drive. Turns out we both rather enjoy Nutella and we'll be on the same camel riding trip in Morocco, so that's pretty awesome. When we were about 8 miles away from Montreal, we hit a ridiculous amount of traffic. It took us about two hours to clear it, and we continued to follow the GPS.
That was our second mistake.
We wound up driving in literally a circle for a little while. For a bit we just thought that all traffic circles looked the same and we were in a different part of town. We were wrong. We stopped to use the bathroom and pick up some wine coolers. After this, we wound up back on the highway heading AWAY from Montreal. Julie and I cracked out wine coolers and started drinking, because there really was no other viable reaction to this. We turned around and headed back for Montreal, deciding to just follow the road signs for a bit and then turn on the GPS when we felt we were near.
AND IT FINALLY WORKED.
We wound up at our hotel (which was actually only their hotel, but we're chillin in here too) and clapped and celebrated. Legit, I have never been happier to see a fricken hotel in my life. We set our stuff down and went out to eat, because we were all ravenous and it was about 8 PM at this point. We went to a restaurant called Scores which was sort of like an Applebees/Chilis. I had a super good salad and a fucking delicious chicken, bacon, and pesto-mayonnaise sandwich which I only ate half of. We came back to our room, and we're now hanging out watching some TV show about a guy who got stuck on a mountain in Transylvania or something.
After everything with not thinking I could afford the trip, with my passports, and with today's endeavors, I am going to kiss the ship when I see it tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment