BORDER CROSSING

I decided that I would skip across the border to Omak in Washington State, on Tuesday to do a hit and run shopping trip to Wal Mart. Omak is around 125k's from Okanagan Falls and the border crossing is at the Canadian border town of Osoyoos.

It is a distance to go shopping but it is worth it as most items are anything from 10%- 60% cheaper in the US.

Because of the huge hassle I had re-entering Canada in early November I checked my passport and my Canadian paperwork on the Monday before the trip just to make sure all was in order. For this entry into Canada I was given a formal piece of paper which was stapled to my passport and it lays out the conditions of my entry and stay into Canada. Part of this paperwork was folded and out of sight and when I unfolded it on Monday I received a shock as typed at the bottom of the document were the words, "THIS DOES NOT AUTHORIZE RE-ENTRY INTO CANADA."

Damn did this mean if I left Canada they wouldn't let me back in? I couldn't take that risk so I spent an hour trying to get an answer to this question. Of course all of the immigration enquiry lines were automated and I wasn't able to talk to a "real" person. All I could do was go to the border on Tuesday and ask someone there. Not a great option but the only one available to me.

It was a beautiful day on Tuesday, one of those crisp, clear cold days where it is a pleasure to drive. I arrived at the border crossing which is rather large as it houses Canadian Border Control on one side and on the other American Border Control. There were no signs anywhere to direct a person to an enquiry centre so I had to make a few guesses and park the car and walk.

I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing as I was walking across the roadway where the border control boxes are, I was half expecting siren's and gunshots but nothing happened. I went to the enquiry counter and spoke to a very young Canadian Border Control Officer who only confused me more.

She said I maybe able to re-enter Canada and maybe not. It all depends what it has on my dossier. Dossier? Yes I have a dossier and if it says I have a criminal record or if I am deemed undesirable, well re-entry maybe refused. I asked her could she checked before I crossed? She said she couldn't because that wasn't the protocol.

I said to her that it was a roll of the dice for me and I had to take my chances? She nodded sagely and said that was right. Great!

With some trepidation I decided to risk it as I have a trip to California planned for late December and I had to know before then.

So I got in the line to enter the USA. They ran a German Shepherd drug, sniffer dog over the car and in such circumstances you can't help but being a little nervous. You just pray that the dog doesn't stop and go into some sort of meltdown around your car. Thankfully it didn't.

The Homeland Security guy was nice enough, all the standard questions, where are you going in the US, why are you going there, how long are you going to stay, ect, ect. I felt pretty smug as I had a newly issued 5 year American visa in my passport but I was quickly deflated when I was told that I didn't have a "white slip" in my passport. I was told to pull over and report to the office.

The office was full of gun-toting Homeland Security officers just waiting for someone, anyone to make a false move. That wasn't going to be me so I was all yes sir and no sir's to them. They tried to tell me that it was my fault that I didn't have the white slip and my explanation just didn't cut it with them.

Thankfully this wasn't a great drama and they had to issue me with a new one to go in my passport as proof of entry into the US. For this I had to pay Uncle Sam $6. But I was through and away on Highway 97 on my way to Omak. A single lane highway all the way to Omak and I suppose this is what you call backwoods America, full of pick up trucks, good 'ol boy's and rifles.

Omak is a reasonably small town and its claim to fame is the Omak Stampede Rodeo which includes the "World Famous Suicide Race," (Their words). I was lucky enough to attend the Stampede in early August and it was a great experience and an opportunity to get a taste of the "real America." So Omak isn't all that big but it does have a Super Wal Mart. Interesting mix of people in the store, lots of old folks and an awful lot of Mexicans, enough to have many Mexican grocery lines in the store.

It was a smash and grab, get in get out trip and I achieved my aim in short time and loaded up my trolley with goodies. Withing 70 minutes I was back on the road for home.

On the way back I caught an interesting sight. A Washington State Trooper had pulled over a car going in the opposite direction, nothing strange in that but the car the State Trooper was driving was different. The car was around 15 years old, dirty, battered and beat up, no way in the world would suspect that this was a police car. It was only the red and blue lights in the grill, dashboard and rear window of the car that gave it away.

On the way back I stopped at the tiny town of Tonasket to visit an antique shop called Aussie Antiques with a picture of a kangaroo hanging out the front. I had stopped before but the store was closed. I went in, had a look around, found nothing interesting and was walking out when the owner said thanks for visiting, I gave him a standard "thanks mate" and he almost had a fit.

"You an Aussie?" he asked. "Yeah," I answered as I continued out the door with my new friend following close behind.

It turns out his name was Colin and he was from Bunbury in Western Australia and had been in Tonasket for 13 years after marrying an American girl. He looked like Michael Palin and was a real nice bloke. He said that they don't get many Australian's at all through this neck of the woods and he just wanted to chat.

As we stood outside his shop chatting he motioned to two young people in their twenties crossing the road, they were relatives of Colin from Bondi Beach. Well you know the small world thing, so here was another example I was born in Bondi and spent the first 10 years or so there. These guys even knew the street where I lived. Go figure!

I left Colin promising to call in whenever I went to Omak.

It was with some trepidation that I waited in line to cross back into Canada. Finally it was my turn and I drove to the booth and handed across my passport with a cheery g'day mate and a bright, but forced smile. Thankfully I had a happy and chatty border control guy who asked me the usual questions of where I have been, how long, what did I buy, ect, ect. He informed me that he loved Australia and that is where he was going to retire as it was too cold in Canada.

He hardly appeared to look at my passport as he spent most of the time scanning my receipt for groceries. He informed me that I had more than the allowable $20 worth of dairy but was going to let it go. He gave me back my passport and gave me a cheery goodbye.

I had done it I was back in Canada! I like the States but there is something about the place, I just feel better off in Canada, not sure what it is.

So that was Allan's really excellent Wal Mart adventure, long and convoluted but successful in the end.

WINNING WALLABIES

The weekend started off well for a change with the Wallabies beating Wales early Saturday morning Canadian time. The matches are not on TV over here so you have to search the web. A couple of weeks ago I paid $75USD to sign up for an Internet subscription service that provides sports feeds.

This service shows nearly every sport known to man the problem is whether you can pick up the feed. Over the last couple of weeks I have endured poor feeds via a matchbox size screed on my laptop. The feed is intermittent and freezes for minutes at a time, usually when a try is about to be scored or saved.

Add this aspect to the way the Wallabies have played over the past few weeks makes for a very frustrating weekend.

This weekend I had the same problems initially I couldn't find a site on my computer to watch the game and when it did it froze and took ages to re-load. Of course this is the 40 minutes that the Wallabies decided to play rugby and turn on the razzle dazzle, but I saw none of it.

Totally pissed off I went looking for another channel at halftime and found one that was free. It was the Foxsports feed from Australia so here I was in Canada watching the Wallabies play rugby against Wales watching a feed from Australia....strange.

So I got to see the second half and stayed on the channel to watch the All Blacks beat France. That was a great game of running rugby.

It has been cold and bleak here over the weekend, no rain or snow but overcast and clod. Now in the midst of getting out and putting up Christmas decorations a chore I am trying to stay away from.

Not much on the radar for the week except for a trip to Wal-Mart in Washington State to do some grocery shopping as it is so much cheaper in the USA than here in Canada.

PICKLES ON A STICK

Often when I talk to family or friends on the phone or when I am out and about in Canada people ask me what I find are the major differences between living in Australia and living in Canada.

That got me thinking and here is a list off the top of my head in no particular order.

Taxes: In British Columbia where I live purchasers pay two taxes on sales, a Provincial tax and a federal tax. That's okay I have no problems at all in paying taxes what I don't like though is here the tax is added after the sale. It still takes me by suprise. Here I am thinking that I have just got myself a sweet deal and then they add the taxes at the point of sale. Just yesterday I bout a TV and paid $100 in Province and Federal taxes and then paid another $35 in TV tax? I still have no idea what that is. So my sweet TV deal ended up costing and extra $135 which didn't make the deal so sweet after all. Another time I constantly get caught out with the taxes is for flights and accommodation. The airline sites here in Canada quote all of their fares without the taxes. They get added when you go to pay. I like the Australian way, when you see a price you know that is what you pay as all the taxes have been added in.

Mail boxes: Posties have it easy in this part of the world as they don't home deliver banks of post boxes are set up in strategic areas and residents are issued with a box and a key. Up until a short while ago our postbox was about 500 metres away, just a month ago the boxes moved and now they are only 30 metres away which is better. Two advantages of the mailbox banks are that amongst the banks are several over sized boxes where you can have your parcels delivered and there is a slot at the top of the bank where you can post letters. So no posties here on motorbikes or foot, they all ride around in mini vans.

Petrol Stations: Here in BC you must pay before you fill up.

Banks and Banking: I can't believe how antiquated the banking system is here. Internet banking is way behind Australia and B Pay is non-existant.

Your Welcome: Canadians are renowned for being the politest of people and Your Welcomes fly thick and fast between all and sundry. I have been thought rude because I don't respond and never will (lord, strike me down if I do) with a Your Welcome. I still use the "no worries" or "no problem" when someone does me a service. Canadians don't get it unfortunately.

Winter sports: The sports sections here are filled with ice hockey, skiing, curling etc. all ice sports really. Plus a smattering of NBA and gridiron (Canadian/American). For a while I was getting 3 AFL and 2 NRL matches live a weekend as well as all of the rugby tests live. The AFL and NRL dried up as soon as the English Premier League started, though I did get the AFL Grand Final live. I don't even get the rugby tests live now I have to go onto the net to get them.

Food: Really not all that much is different, the foods are basically the same but packaged and presented differently. Meat is expensive here and fish is cheap. Probably the strangest thing I can think of is that they sell pickles on a stick at the cinema and people actually buy them to eat whilst watching a movie. (I am not kidding). And people say Vegemite is a weird food!

There are probably plenty more little things that pop up from time to time but the longer one stays the more you become used to and accept the differences.

Canada is a great place to live, very similar to Australia, the people are nice and the scenery is spectacular. What are you waiting for?

DEER ATTACKS

Cold and a little bleak in OK Falls at the moment. One of the hardest things to get used to is how early the sun sets at this time of year. Twilight is just a little after 1600 and it is totally dark by 1640. God knows what it will be like in the dead of winter.

I had an interesting experience on the walk with the dog yesterday. We were walking in the huge expanse of community forrest and two deer's were in front of us moving slowly away, but keeping an eye on both the dog and I.

Matilda, as is her want was scampering around like a blue arse fly, running full pelt here, screeching to a stop there, coming back and having a mock charge at me. In other words she was being a pest as usual. As we started to go up the slope of a hill Matilda ran 40 metres in front of me and stopped on the track to look back to where I was.

Now the mother deer must have watched all of this and thought that this pint-sized dog must have been a potential threat to her accompanying fawn, who was no Bambi anymore, it was a good size.

So mother deer decided to give Matilda a warning and charged her. Matilda, dipstick that she is wasa totally unaware of this and was looking back blissfully unaware at me. She didn't realise that she was in any danger until the deer stormed past her at close quarters. That got her attention.

The mother deer wasn't finished and came back for another go just to make sure the dog got the message. This time Matilda saw her coming and leapt out of the way. Luckily she jumped the right way otherwise she would have been trampled. Having got the message Matilda bolted back to me and hid behind my legs. The deer's gave us both a final look and took off over the hill.

I looked upon all of this with some amusement as one doesn't usually connect cute looking deers with Kamikazi charges. I assume the deer meant to frighten the dog rather than harm it. I know if she had hit the dog she would have done some serious damage.

Of course today on our walk Matilda gave all the deers we saw a wide berth. Perhaps she isn't as silly as I thought!

XMAS LIGHTS

Well it appears to be that time of year again as Xmas lights and decorations are starting to spring up all over the place, here in OK Falls. I have been told that these are the early birds, the harbingers of garish colour, kitsch and bright lights to come.



In my short time in Canada I have quickly come to the realisation that Canadians just love to have an excuse to decorate their house with all manner of trinkets and the only thing that is better than that is the opportunity to dress oneself in outlandish costumes and not be thought the worse for it.



First on the agenda was the change of season from summer to fall (autumn). Here, if you are indeed a good Canadian you have to place scarecrows on your front porch and a wreath of autumn leaves on your door. Now I don't know if this is some type of pagan or perhaps christian ritual that us Down Under heathens have allowed to pass by or maybe it is that our storekeepers aren't savvy enough to cash in on another consumer bonanza that has hapless citizens racing about to purchase a scarecrow to place upon an urban porch without nary a crop in sight.



Shortly after Canadians had welcomed fall to their doorstep they wage war against turkeys. Thousand upon thousands of turkey's paid the supreme sacrifice to decorate Canadian Thanksgiving table feasts. Families come together to celebrate what I am not sure. I know why Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, but I am still unsure what Canadians celebrate on the day.



No sooner are the turkey carcasses removed from the dining room table when Canadians take to the fields to collect over sized pumpkins that are grown for the distinct purpose of being mutilated and then illuminated in a front yard. It seems a little incongruous that there are millions starving in the world and all these pumpkins are grown to simply amuse and then left to rot away.



Canadians really throw themselves into the Halloween celebrations. Just up the road from our place a family dug a hole in their front lawn and deposited a full length coffin which contained a skeleton. The whole scene was cordoned off with special Halloween tape and floodlights illuminated the area.



What a show.

I have to place my hand up in the air this time as I too plundered peaceful fields in search of the perfect Halloween pumpkin. An 87lb pumpkin was the best we could do and we proudly sat the pumpkin on the front lawn only to be embarrassed and disappointed a few hours later when a neighbour deposited a pumpkin twice the size on their front lawn.



The shame of it all!



The impending Halloween frenzy was too much for me I had to escape back to Australia to find a Halloween free zone. It almost worked and I was only accosted by three groups of small children presenting themselves at the front door of my son's house. I envisage in years to come someone will have to go to some remote and backwards place like New Zealand to escape the clutches of the Halloween beast.



I can either deny all that goes on in regards to these celebrations and claim that they are un-Australian or I can join in.



So how do I get on the roof to hook up the illuminated Santa and reindeer's!

On a personal note it would be nice to know if I am writing this blog for an audience of one....ME. If anyone else out there is reading this leave a comment. Nothing much just something to let me know that I am not alone.

DASHING DEER

It seemed that only a short time ago I was watching kangaroos bounding past the house where I lived. It happened on such a regular basis that I didn't even bother to look up. It was so mundane that the dog even stopped barking at them as they bounded by the back fence.

Now I find myself in Canada and confronted by a new type of bounder. Well to be accurate deer don't bound so much as leap, though those around OK Falls are more the ambling type of deer who just saunter down the middle of the rode going to one suburban garden after another.

The Australian in me still gets a kick out of seeing deer wandering around the streets. They really have no fear of humans and you can get reasonably close before they wander off. They crop grass close to busy roads all the time, yet in all my Canadian travels I haven't see one roadkill deer. The only dead deer I have seen were 2 dead deer beside a road in Washington, State, USA.

That tells me two things. American deer are dumber than Canadian deer and Australian kangaroos are dumber than all the animals in North America, because our roads are littered with dead kangaroos.

Just this morning I let the dog out into what passes as a backyard to be confronted by 2 deer happily chomping away on the remains of a summer garden. The dog thought about a chase but decided that discretion was the better part of valor and sat back valiantly and saw the deer off the property. The deer paid both the dog and I scant attention and wandered off when they felt like it.

Damn deer!

The other animal I have run into recently is bighorn sheep. I have seen them on the rocky slopes of the hills near where I walk the dog. They have only appeared recently so I assume that the onset of the cold weather and snow has driven them down from the higher peaks.

Sometimes I just see them far off silhouetted on a far off hill, but today they were relatively close to the trail a group of 5 bighorns who just watched my passage impassively never once taking their eyes from me or the dog. The buck was a huge animal with an impressive set of horns. Sad that these animals that are adept at suriving in such a harsh environment are often easy fodder for hunters gun's.

Not much going on with the book, still editing slowly with a target to finish by 07 December. What a relief that will be.

TOMMY REVISITED

Finally after well over a month away from the keyboard I started back again today at my book about a boy called Tommy Tippett. I finished the first draft of the book around five weeks and 85,500 words ago. Most of what I have read about writing states that once the first draft is complete you should lock the manuscript away in a drawer and leave it there for some time and revisit it later when you are refreshed and recharged. The theory goes that the time away from your book will allow you to look at it in a new light when you revisit your pages.

So that's what I did, I had a break and now I have returned keen to finish the editing process and get the book out there and see what happens. I can't say it was easy though, I did have some trepidation about starting off again as I really wasn't all that excited about the whole process of reviewing over 200 A4 sized pages.

today I bite the bullet and opened the book and started to edit, finese and re-write. Like most things the hardest part was that first step and once on my way it was easier. I only completed 10 pages today but now know I can complete more than that so I have placed a deadline of finishing the editing of Tommy Tippett by 07 December 2009. Let see how it goes.

It was a balmy 12c here in OK Falls today and the sun was shining a nice change after almost a week of cold, wet and sometimes snowy weather.

I started my workout routine again yesterday, like writing it is hard to commit to that first step but oncec taken it becomes easier. My knees are holding up, just so no high impact workouts, but enough to get the cardio going and the waist trim.

On that point I bought a pair of Asic Kayano 15 runners, the same brand I have bought for the last 10 years. I priced them when I was back home in Oz a few weeks ago and they were almost $300. I bought a pair from the USA and I paid $100. It is hard to imagine why a pair of running shoes should almost cost $200 more in Australia.

I dropped the Jeep off at a local garage today for a full service. It is just a new business so I thought I would support a local business. I know buggerall about cars and I am always wary of mechanics and the like, I suppose I just don't trust them. I thought a worst case scenario may have been $200 so I was taken aback when it came to $316.

But wait there is more in Canada the pricec you see is never the price you get for nobody adds the Federal or Provincial tax into the price. So an airline ticket you see for $120 is in fact $150 or more. By the time the taxes were applied to my repair bill the total cost was $355. All for a service. he told me what he did but I don't trust him. Yeah sure, shop local!