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Road Trip 2011: Side Trips

I like to travel a little bit, it's my way of being adventurous. It's not like I'm looking for the biggest adrenaline rush I can find, I just happen to be a curious person. I like exploring, and I like seeing things that I don't see back home. All in all, leaving my little comfort zone behind seems like a good way to do this.

As a result, though, I end up on a bunch of side trips. Once I end up at my destination, there's always some other place to see or thing to try. However, I have quickly learned that this is not the norm. That's all well and good, except for sometimes I have to explain myself. Some of those (some)times, I get to explain it to immigration and customs officials. This is all sorts of fun, let me tell you.

This last time, I was in Detroit and my friend and I decided to hop over to Ontario to grab dinner. It was close by, we had never been, and we had time for it. All in all, we figured, "why not?" So we drove over and had dinner there. There were some sights to see, so we did that, too. Heck, we even got caught in a thunderstorm, so we waited it out in a casino. It's not like we just showed up and then turned around to head back the way we came.

When we got to the border to get back into the US, though, this was deemed suspicious. Imagine for a second that two guys in a rented car told you that they had flown in from California, so that they could have dinner in Ontario. You might think was a tad odd. Of course, as the details of this story came out, you might be more inclined to believe these two guys.

Not this guy. He kept trying to trap us in a lie, like he was going to win some award or something. Why, yes, agent So-and-so, you are the most awesome agent this month. Here you go, have a cookie for your efforts.

He asked about everything from why we didn't have our luggage on us (it was in the hotel) to why we called it a road trip if we weren't driving the whole time. Seriously, we had to justify the use of the words "road trip" before he was happy. He went through the trunk to make sure we weren't smuggling anything, too.

The funniest part was that we were, in fact, completely innocent. As he dug harder and got himself more worked up, it became funnier and funnier. Now, we both knew not to laugh at the guy as he was in his power trip, but the whole thing was mildly amusing.

Still, the episode did give me pause. I am going to seriously reconsider dinner in Ontario anytime soon.
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