You’ll have to pardon me if I detour from my usual deadpan serious blogging tone and am a little bit sarcastic tonight. Tonight marks the last night of my trip home to visit my parents and since my father had to pick up some items in the States, we all piled into his truck for what was probably my first trip into the USA since 9/11. Fasten your seatbelts, this is gonna get bumpy.
So much has changed since my childhood when you could literally be inside the United States in five minutes. We got to the border crossing at Ogdensburg, New York to find about fifteen cars in the line, and only one inspection lane open. Inspection interviews that took thirty seconds ten years ago take four or five minutes now with Homeland Security’s need to examine everybody’s paperwork individually. After sitting nearly motionless in the line for close to half an hour a second lane opened, and for some mysterious reason the agent in the first lane started going faster once the second lane opened.
I was really excited about going to the States tonight for the simple reason that the Canadian and US dollar are so close to each other in value now. Really though, as I browsed through the one store we stopped at, I didn’t find anything exceptional. The only thing that truly blew me away were the prepaid cellular phones. It is just ludicrous how cheap you can get a “throwaway” phone for in the States. Prepaid cellular phones that cost almost $200 in Canada were half that in the States. The “cheap” phones started at $35 which you never see up here — and they were Nokia — not some cheap LG crap. The rate plans were also ridiculously low. This is one place where Canada needs to take a lesson from the US.
The return through Canadian customs took about 15% of the time it took to get across the American border, except for the fact my father was declaring a large quantity of commercial goods for his business.
Maybe a larger city would have better deals, but I really didn’t see anything tonight that would tempt me to shop in the States.
You knew I’d have to comment on this one, didn’t you?
You expected to find deals *in Ogdensburg*??! Have you learned nothing of the time you spent here? Seriously. This is the black hole of the universe.
And, yes, getting into the States takes forever. Oy. I don’t even like crossing over to Canada just because of the hassle to come back.
DJ
October 24th, 2007