First Canadian Post, Eh?

"O, Canada! Our home and native land!" My first trip out of the United States has been interesting so far, to say the least. I'll catch you up how things have happened so far:

Wednesday, 830 AM CDT
I get to the airport and head to the Southwest gate. There is virtually no line, but then again, Jackson, MS is rarely busy during the mid-week. The Mrs. and I do the TSA thing with no problems. I mean, absolutely no problems. I accidentally forgot to take my keys out of my pocket before I preceded through the metal detector. The guy waves me through and I don't have any problems.

(record scratch)

I'm wearing a ring and have keys in my pocket and the metal detector doesn't go off? Great. Now I have to worry about 9mm toting passengers since I know that someone in Jackson forgot to plug up the machine.

As for flying itself, I'm no longer nervous when it comes to airplanes any more. I'm probably still considered a novice to most, with only roughly 12 round trips to my credit, but I enjoy flying. Well, let me rephrase: I love airplane sleep. I'm not sure what it is about being up in the air, but I'm so relaxed there. Maybe it's from coming off the adrenaline high of the sheer terror I feel as the plane takes off, I don't know.

3:00 PM EDT
After a three hour flight to Baltimore and an hour lay over, we finally arrive in Buffalo, NY and proceed to the car rental counter. The first thing I notice is that there's a lack of air conditioning going on at the airport. I'm not sure what idiot decided to save on the bill, but it's 90 freakin' degrees here today. I saw a dragon in the parking lot with a cup of ice as I reached my rental car. Just because you get snow seven months out of the year, people who fly into your city aren't freakin' from here! Get some A/C!

Sorry about that. So, The Mrs. and I hop in and drive roughly 15 minutes over the bridge and into Canada. She asked me before I got into the car to get the passports out of the trunk. "Nah, we'll get it later," I said thinking we had a longer drive to Canada that would include a stop along the way.

Had I known Canada was just around the corner, then maybe I would have been more prepared. I get to the border and the Border Patrol asked for identification. When I passed her my license and mentioned that my passport was in the trunk, her tone went from accommodating to harsh.

"Why would you not have your info on you, sir?"

"Uh, well, I didn't know we'd reach the border so fast," I stuttered while trying not to look in the direction of The Mrs.

"Pull over to that bay on the left and wait, sir," she said pointing towards a security area.

Great. Now I've pissed Nell Fenwick off. I drive over into Bay 12 and in Bay 11, this guy is getting the business! He's standing at the front of his car while Border Patrol is going through it with a fine tooth comb. His doors are open and the contents of his car are in the street. They'll ask him a question and he would walk towards them only for them to say, "stay in the front of the car, sir!"

Under 35-yr olds may not remember Nell from The Dudley Do-Right Show.

It appears that they've found some liquor in the backseat of this dude's car and they're not happy about it. Now I'm getting nervous. Although I don't have any contraband in the ride, I don't want pissed off agents coming to me and throwing all of my luggage out. Luckily, another guy comes over and gets our license and passports. He asked a lot of questions about the nature of our trip and made small talk with us before sending us on our way. The guy in Bay 11 was on his way to the Border Patrol's office when we were leaving. I guess it won't be a good day for him.

The first think I notice when driving on Canadian soil was the change in the metric system. 100 km/h = 60 mph. What? I have to do math while I drive now? I have to calculate that 50 km to Toronto = 30 miles? Ugh. Not fun. After a two hour drive, we finally arrived to Toronto.

Continued on Second Canadian Post, Eh?