homeless, now in Canada

The adventures continue.

Moved out of the apt. for good this morning, and, did all I needed to do in Seattle, including returning my library books, a case where one parks as close to the library as possible and runs over to drop them in the drop slot before jetting away from campus.

Then I learned that where I'm moving into in P-town won't actually be ready for me to move into it until Sunday, though it was supposed to be ready sooner. I need to do some orientation activities for work on Monday, but officially start on Wednesday, so Sunday will still work for moving in.

So after digesting this, I sat in my car in Volunteer Park for an hour as though I were some bum cruiser and decided what to do while checking out the view and making calls and going through papers. No place to live for the next four days. Camping at this time of year is out of the question, my handful of friends in Seattle seemed all tied up, and the ones in P-town as well. So I decided to make an adventure of it. After visiting the greenhouse and climbing the water tower, I hopped in the car and drove by my U-haul truck to make sure it was parked and locked securely, and then got onto I-5, but instead of going south as I had planned, I went north.

At the border to Canada about two hours later, I had to go through customs. They pulled me over and did a complete vehicle search and background check, because it bothered them that a) I had no current permanent residence, b) I had many belongings in my car (they were afraid I would try to emigrate illegally, I think) c) I was alone and don't know anyone in Canada, d) I wasn't sure where I would be staying in Vancouver, e) I wasn't quite sure how long I'd be there f) all the strange foreign visas in my passport, g) the car is not yet registered to me, but actually to my dad as I buy it from him, etc. I didn't have any firearms or pepper spray or narcotics, so that cleared the way some. They even almost called my dad to validate that I was allowed to take the car across the border; apparently, one usually needs a letter of permission to do that, and had a narcotics dog investigate my car. I got a full interrogation of about 30 questions from fully armed customs officials, who seemed most confused by the fact that it's a rather spontaneous trip. The female ones were actually pretty cute, in keeping with my ongoing life theme of girls in uniform. Anyway, I got through that after explaining the situation a couple of times (and also explaining some of my life history as they tried to figure out what the hell the different langauges and Erlaubinsse in my passport were all about) with a warning to leave my belongings at home the next time I came, to have a permanent address, to have a letter about being allowed to bring the car across the border, and so on. They also didn't seem to believe me about the U-haul, so I had to show them my U-haul reservation forms, and the contact info of the leasing agency in P-town and my job offer letter. All of this bureaucracy excites me all the more to have my very own army of stamps in my new job to stamp all the cross-cultural paperwork with. I've decided to get a personal stamp too, which looks offical, just as a backup thing to have in situations like the above.

Anyway, about 30 or 40 minutes later I was on my way again and arrived in Vancouver. Visited tourist info and found an inexpensive place to stay. Deciding what to do here-- it really is a gorgeous place, just a bit chilly. Am glad to finally get a chance to visit, would have taken much longer to get here all the way from P-town.