Yeah!  Blame Canada for…er…well.  We could blame them for…um…Nope, I cant’ think of a single negative thing to blame those crazy Canuks to the Canorth for.  Our trip to our northern neighbor was quite lovely indeed.

Sure the border crossing was a mind numbing 105 min wait, when the online report and the electronic signs all promised 45 mins.  And sure a few dozen Canadians cut in line at the very front missing the entire line and ipso facto –the wait.  But can I blame them?  No.  And, though we were the idiots waiting, at least we had our house with us.  I went to the back and made us nibblies to snack on (celery and pb in case they made us surrender our fruits and veggies).  We could use the W.C. any time we wanted.  All in all: not too bad.

Especially when we were over the border with hardly a blink by the Border Agent.  We had read online, and been warned, that we could bring no veggies in and that they would want records of the dogs rabies vaccines.  While in ID we made a special trip to the vet to get Cali her booster because she was a few days away from needing it and we didn’t want to worry.  We printed out all their paper work and I had their “non drivers licenses” out that I had made for them years ago.  Yep, we were ready to provide all documentation needed.  Only, none was needed.  The dogs are clearly visible from the windows of the vehicle, and Henery barks when people come to the window, so there is no denying that she knew they were in there.  She obviously didn’t care.  Her main concern was that our address is listed as a San Diego address and the vehicle is registered in South Dakota.  She asked a few questions about that then waved us through.  Piece of cake.

Upon entry the sun began to set.  It was almost as if the Canadian Gods brushed the sky in a beautiful yellow, orange and  purple greeting.

As we made our way to our Canadian destination we were talking about how crazy it is that all the BS of our homeland is irrelevant up there.  We were a mere 30 miles from the border and yet the US debt ceiling is irrelevant, there is no budget crisis.  The unemployment stats are different and unique to Canada.  The gun laws are different.  Health care is different.  It was really crazy to be so close and yet so far away.

We were having this deep and intellectual discussion when arrived at the Grahams home in North Vancouver.  Matt Schultz (Shotzy) was college roommates with Matt Graham (Grahamster or Grahamola) at CSU Fullerton.  Grahamster moved to England some time after “University”.  There he met and wed the lovely Kerry.  They lived in England for a few more years, and had a really cute little girl, Olivia, before transplanting to Canada.  Isn’t Olivia a doll!

 They had been official Canadians for about 6 weeks when we arrived.  I would say for the most part they were loving it.  There is always an adjustment period after a move and Kerry, being English, was slowly having to adjust to the sun.  On one sunny walk to the library she looked at Matt and I and asked “You guys really like this then?” referring to the sunshine.  We replied that we do.  I was reminded of the time we went to visit them in England and the Matts went to play a game of soccer er, sorry football.  I was invited to sit with a sweet young British lady and her toddler daughter to watch the game.  Sometime during the game the sun came out.  I tilted my face up to the sky and closed my eyes letting the rays fall down on me when I heard a tiny voice say “Mummy, what is this”.  “It’s sunshine Darling”, the mother said.  “I don’t like it” rebutted the tiny human.  The mom replied simply “That’s because we’re British Darling.”  And she held an umbrella over the little ones head until the clouds came back from their brake and took over the job.  Listening to this I thought “WHAT THE HELL!”  I live for sunshine and days with no clouds.  Sure I wear SPF 70 all Summer, but I sure do love to be outside getting salty and sweaty.

We had a really great time with them.  They are still in Tourist Mode and wanting to see the city too.  So we went exploring with them a bit and saw some of what Vancouver has to offer.  We spent time at the beach with the dogs in Deep Cove, spent a few hours at Granville Island (which boasts a free water park for kiddos, talented buskers, and amazing markets).  We explored all of Stanley park by bike and decided it was the coolest city park we’ve been to (sorry Balboa, you are still 2nd in my heart).

One of the most amusing part of our time with the Grahams (for me anyways) was how different English English and American English are.  In England they call a crib a cot.  Depending on the context, a costume is a bathing suite or a Halloween costume, but hey would never say bathing suit.  Petrol is said instead of gas, a push chair is a stroller.  And in Kerry’s dad Dave’s case (he’s Scottish): he says Gyewgul, we say Google.  ;)

Yep, we really enjoyed Vancouver. It is a very cosmopolitan city where many languages are spoken and turns out that international “stink eye” translates into tallyhoish perfectly. Evidently Canadian HOA’s don’t particularly appreciate RV’s parked on their property either unbeknownst to the Grahams or us. (While Paul, self-appointed HOA not-so-secret operative was trying to get us tossed out on our tires, we formulated a devious plan to go Pikey style on them. Once a week we’d invite another RV to join us. We would park in a circle and they would have to go through months of legal mess to get us evicted as squatters. Who’s with us?!?) Yeah ok, so we didn’t do that and decided to just go park on the street. We are good guests.

Still, we would definitely go back again to spend more time there.  I’m not sure we’d ever live there perma-style, even though Grahamola was explaining the “Care Card” that they received that covers all of their medical needs.  Nope, we’d rather stay here in the good ol’ USA with our debt crisis, high insurance, gun “issues”, traffic, bad global rep, NY style pizza, crazy good burgers, amazingly scenic roads, friends and family, and our South Dakota tags.

Tally Ho, Eh!

xo

Breezy.