Day 15 - Sat, May 22:

After connecting late in the day with a friend and former coworker of mine who now lives in Vancouver, Canada, I decided to make a last minute decision to make the 2 hour drive north and cross the international border this evening, rather than wait until morning…

I get through the line of cars to the border agent around 9:30pm. Me being me, I answer all questions openly and honestly…fully expecting to not to have any sort of trouble…

But as the questions keep coming, I begin to get the sense that things are not going so “well”… yet I have no idea why. 

More questions…more answers. Some are questions I’ve already answered.

And finally, “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to pull your car up to the left and park under the white canopy. Please walk inside the building and speak with the officers at the counter.”

*Gulp!*

I park my vehicle, compose myself, and walk inside. The counter is to the left. I walk up… and that’s when the real fun begins.

Now keep in mind, I’m not easily intimidated. I’ve been through a lot in the rodeo of life. And there are few things that make me truly nervous… but I must say, this was definitely one of them. Not at first, though. At first I just had an uneasy feeling…

The questioning begins… and a few minutes in, I’m beginning to sweat.

I must’ve been questioned for about 10 minutes straight. And I’m under-compensating for what it felt like (20 minutes, at least!)… 

What’s my business, why am I here, where am I going, who do I know, what do I have with me, do I have drugs, weapons, explosives, what do I do, what does the person I am meeting do, how do I know this person, where do I live, where have I lived, how much money do I have on me, how much money do I have in the bank… etc. 

And then I’m asked questions again to see if I’m lying. 

It’s weird when you know what they’re doing, but you’re still completely intimidated by it. It’s like I was sitting over my own shoulder taking it all in from another perspective…while also experiencing it first hand.

My mouth begins to get dry while I’m answering the questions… so I’m finding it harder to talk and I have to stop to try to swallow. I’m sure it made me look very innocent. Sure. ;)

I’m asked to empty my pockets. Which I do. My phone comes out turned on (it was an old “junker” and sometimes did that)…so I make a move to turn it off…

“No sir, you can leave it on.” and then the officer takes my phone… and starts looking through my recent texts and getting into my email.

“Wow! You can do that!?” is what my mind is shouting. Me, on the other hand, I’m quiet as a mouse. Just “stunned”, really.

I don’t have anything to hide on my phone…and there’s nothing on my phone worth “discovering”, but still, it’s pretty intimidating and just plain “weird”. (As was being asked how much money I have in the bank! - Did NOT like that at all.)

Shortly after, I’m asked to go sit down.

I sit next to a cute Afghani girl on a bench. She basically turns to me and says, “I know why I’m here, why are you here!?” (and this is where I discover she’s Afghani).

After about ten minutes of waiting (which really wasn’t bad…did I mention I was talking to a cute Afghani girl?)…and I can see through the front glass doors that they are searching my car, I get called back up to the counter.

“Sir, there are some concerns about the items found in your vehicle.”

Ok, now I’m like, “Whhhhhaaaaaat!?” (In my head) and I probably begin to sweat a bit, too. Keep in mind, I’m not a terrorist!, but I probably looked as guilty as anyone could at that moment.

I’m wondering who snuck things into my vehicle! Am I unsuspectingly transporting drugs…or Mexicans? I have no idea what it could be… but the way things are going, I would’ve probably admitted to everything! Yes, I am smuggling Mexicans! I just had no idea!

That’s when he pulls out one of my “tickets”, the business card I hand out to people during my trip. It looks like a movie ticket and has $100 written on it.

There are about 2,000 of them in two 1,000 pack boxes under my driver’s seat (where they fit perfectly).

“Are you selling these?”

Suddenly my jaw drops (well, my “mental jaw”). Wow, that looks pretty bad… man, they’re nothing. Just business cards! But wow, I’m feeling guilty again.

But I explain that they’re just business cards…and how “Free” or $1 just didn’t seem to have the same impact as $100, so I figured I’d give them a solid value.

I’m sure I looked guilty of something. I’m telling the truth and hearing the words come out of my mouth like lies.

We then have a nice little chat for another ten minutes. And by chat, I mean further interrogation.

He goes through my notepad…it has names, numbers, and addresses in it. GUILTY! “What are these addresses!?”, etc.

Um, it’s my notepad. I keep notes in it.

That’s when he notices this one page… it has dates with numbers next to it… it looks like this…

May 8 - 1

May 9 - 2

May 10 - 3

And it goes up to 40. Which is also the end of the page.

“What are these dates and numbers!”, “Why does it only go up to 40!?”, “What happens on the 40th day!?”

I had to explain, I left on my trip on May 8th, day #1, and I was constantly forgetting what day I was on, so I wrote it down.

Again, “Why does it only go to 40!?”

“Because that’s the end of the page! I ran out of room!”

We’re then back to my “ticket”. He notices the website address on my business card and asks me about it.

“ZeroDean.com. This is your website?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a business? Do you make money from it.”

“Um, no. I’m doing everything for free.”

“You are not working? How is it you are doing this “for free”? What is your source of income?”

I basically answer, “I’m spending my savings.”

Then there were more questions about how much money I had, how much money I had before I started my trip, and how much money I had when I lived in Vegas. And then questions on how I could spend so little money in “X” amount of time.

I didn’t think it was a “little” amount of money. I guess I’m just thrifty.

Finally I’m asked to sit down again while he says he’s going to look over my web site. I use the opportunity to ask if he has a pen and a piece of paper.

“What for?”

“Because, you see that girl over there? I want to give her my contact info.”

A pause. He looks at me. Less intimidating. “Wow, you make friends really fast.” He almost says it like he’s impressed.

“Yeah, that’s kind of true.”

He hands me back the plastic bin containing my stuff (notepad, pen, etc).

“Here, you can take these.”

That’s when I figure I’m not going to be arrested…since I’m able to get some of my personal belongings back, but I’m still not sure what’s going to happen.

I go back to the bench to give the girl my information. And if you’re wondering why I wrote it down instead of giving her a “ticket”, it’s because they treated those “tickets” with such suspicion earlier, I didn’t want to do anything to cause inconvenience to the girl. So I simply wrote down my info, which he gladly accepted…though sadly, I never heard from her. Maybe she’s in a prison somewhere?

In any case, a few minutes later I’m called back up to the counter. The officer has my web site printed out. He shows it to me… gulp.

And then, finally!, he basically says…

“Your application to enter Canada is being denied.” And proceeds to show me a document with some indications of why. And then another that I have to sign that basically is basically to “revoke my application to enter Canada” or something.

So why?

Well, the primary reason is that I had too much “stuff”. Clearly more stuff than was necessary for a 2 day trip to Vancouver. He said that it looked suspiciously like I was trying to move into Canada…

And after all, I did pretty much have all of my posessions with me…though still, not THAT much stuff!

But even though I was denied entry, I felt extremely relieved. The way things were going, I thought I might be an unknowing terrorist or something and was being shipped off to prison somewhere. And even though I was totally innocent and “got off easy”, I still felt like, “Phew! I really dodged a bullet there!”

You can see what I wrote about it after it happened here on facebook: denied entry into Canada.

After my encounter with the border officers, I drove to the nearest US Walmart in Bellingham, WA and slept in my car.