The Border

Grr...that border. If you live in Canada and love to go to the States I am sure that at some point you have been in a border line up of some kind. Usually they aren't too bad, about 30 minutes or so, and they usually seem to go faster than you think they will. Not today!

Today, Kevin and I woke up and got out the door by our target time of 9 a.m. We were driving to Seattle to meet my parents for a Mariners game. My parents had driven all the way from South Dakota, and the plan was to meet them there and then watch a game and ride back up here with them. They will be here for a full week! It's pretty exciting! My mom has never been to an MLB game before, so I was psyched to meet up with them!

Before we left, we checked the border lineups online. Uh oh. 2 hours Peace Arch, 2 hours Pac Highway, 1 Hour Aldergrove, 1 Hour Huntingdon. What??? It's not even a holiday! What the heck was going on? Well, we got on our way, and decided to be sneaky. We have been told, and we have also experienced ourselves, that if you go into the Duty Free store and buy something, you can hop significantly further ahead in the line up! I tried this with my friend Andrea last week when I went down to go shopping. The wait was looking to be over an hour, so we went in to the Duty Free store, bought a lovely bottle of wine that I will be enjoying with my parents when they come up, and we were on our way! Our wait was probably less than half an hour...magical!

Since we had to be at the game by 1 p.m. I suggested that we do this. Unfortunately, everyone else thought to do this too. What happened? CHAOS! WAITING! ENDLESS WAITING! No cars moving...at all! The line up outside of Duty Free seemed to be moving faster than ours! Not by much, but it WAS MOVING! We literally sat in the same place in the line up for over an hour...without budging. Not even an inch.

You can imagine what peoples' moods were like! Yes, just imagine it right now! We were at the end of the line up near the guy with the radio. We heard someone come on and say that there was a couple that was trying to make their way down to Sea-Tac to catch a flight to San Fran and a connecting flight to New Zealand. Their flight was at 1 p.m. It was 10:45. Yeah, they weren't going to make it.

We called the Mariners box office and asked if my parents could at least pick up their tickets, even though they were under our name and we got that all worked out. At least they didn't have to miss the game as well!

So, after waiting in the lineup for about an hour and a half, we decided to turn back. Our buddy with the radio told us it would be AT LEAST two hours before we would get across the border! What? The funny thing was, I could have walked across the border in less than five minutes because I could see it from where we were sitting.

I have to say, I don't really understand this border thing. What creates backlogs of over two hours? How does this happen? Are they asking that many questions? I'm thankful for the security, but seriously, TWO HOURS????

Sadly, we won't get to take in the game with my parents. By the time we would have made it there, the game would have been almost over. We are currently praying that it doesn't go to 18 innings or something like that! Wouldn't that just be the icing on the cake? I guess we will meet up with my parents tonight, in Canada. In the meantime, maybe I'll clean the house, and go to the gym. Or something. I will hope that my mom and dad are having a nice, romantic day together at the ball field! And I will wait...at least this time it's not in my car with the sun-beating down with second hand smoke from the chain-smoking lady beside me wafting in my windows!