Questioned by Border Patrol, Niagara Falls, Canada, 2011

I had a couple of “use or lose” vacation days and wanted to go someplace, but didn’t have enough time off for a plane-ticket kind of trip. Maybe a road trip. My cool co-worker Paul said, in an offhand way: “You should go to Niagara Falls.” So I did. I almost didn’t make it.

It seems you set off some triggers for Canadian border patrol when you are:

a) traveling alone;
b) wearing a hippie-ish (and midriff-baring) peasant top with a denim micro-miniskirt, plus Manic Pixie Dreamgirl braids;
c) without lodging reservations (my plan was to scope out the place in-person and get a cheap motel room close to the falls); and
d) only planning to be in the country for one day/night.

It seems, under these conditions, they think you are some kind of drug mule.

They motioned for me to get out of the line of normal, non-suspicion-arousing, non-potential-scofflaw cars, and come around to the side. They searched my car, and sent me inside a building where I was quizzed.

Them: “What’s your occupation?”
Me: “Writer.”
Them: “I mean, what’s your job?”
Me: “That’s my job. I write for a nonprofit.”
Them: “I mean, what do you do for money?”
Me: “…I write for a nonprofit. They are a nonprofit — but I profit. They pay me.”

Eventually they let me go, but with raised eyebrows — as if they were sure there was something sketchy about me, hmmm, but they couldn’t officially detain me any longer. I later saw they had scrolled through addresses in my GPS, and searched through my trunk. But the rip in the corner of my trunk’s lining happened later — when I was stopped again, by border patrol on the U.S. side.