Road Trip
I set off Thursday on a road trip to Palm Springs, with Richard from work. He has a house there and we are delivering a U-Haul van load of patio furniture.
The weather forecast was supposed to be stormy but the crossing to Port Angeles on the MV Coho was not too bad at all. All was going well until on the US side of the ferry trip we were given the third degree interrogation by the Homeland Security bods. All the other vehicles had departed and they were still questioning Richard about how it was possible to own a house in the US but not intend to work here. They hadn’t heard of the term ‘vacation home’ and they were positive it was not possible. I guess they were hoping to put us on edge so that we would crack and blurt out and confess to some crime or something. They hardly asked me any questions, didnt ask why I was there, didnt ask what nationality I was or ask for ID, but they were kinda insistant and were interested in how old the furniture was.
Then they took a look in my luggage and spent 10 minutes studying my laptop and seemed VERY interested which was making me nervous. I had forgotten that I have an arabic keyboard on it so that might not have helped. Anyhow they didnt find anything incriminating and they had checked out the gabrielross.com website so they could see where I worked and eventually they let us go.
It was quite a shaking experience – welcome to America – NOT.
Well at least Richard didnt have to pay any duty on the furniture which has saved him some big dosh. Haha. Took us 30 minutes to calm down. I haven’t felt that shaken by an official before, it was a shock, and it’s not like I haven’t got in some tricky situations before as I’ve bribed police in India, Pakistan and been deported from Bulgaria once.
I set off Thursday on a road trip to Palm Springs, with Richard from work. He has a house there and we are delivering a U-Haul van load of patio furniture.The weather forecast was supposed to be stormy but the crossing to Port Angeles on the MV Coho was not too bad at all. All…