Road Trip

Spring is here again, and with it comes another road trip, with another sorted cast of characters and tall tales. A few weeks ago, Wells and I embarked on a tour of the Great White North. Two ferries, two states, one island, and one province later, I can honestly tell you I like Ketchup potato chips. Oh, and one shouldn’t try to bribe border guards… we’ll come back to that one.

The trip came about in a rather haphazard way – Wells still has a Spring Break, so he had a week to play with. I fell into having a few days off (persistent checking of the vacation schedule pays off).

Together, we searched for the perfect place to escape with a few friends for a weekend, maybe more. Then the friends idea fell through – apparently they’re not up for planning a vacation three days before taking it… the nerve!

After a lengthy whittling down period of about 30 hours, we chose British Columbia from a list of suitors that included Las Vegas and New York, and briefly discussed an itinerary. It consisted of: 1.) Drive to Port Angeles, WA. 2.) Get on a ferry to Victoria, BC. 3.) See Canada. 4.) Come home a few days later.

We left Woodburn (I had to pick Wells up) at around 6:30am on Sunday and headed north on I-5, arriving obscenely early in Port Angeles. We proceeded to eat at a restaurant next to the ferry, then got our place in line for the next boat off the mainland. In other words, we sat in my car for an hour and a half playing Oregon Trail on my laptop (for example “The wagon tipped over while floating. You lose 449 pounds of food, YOUR MOM (drowned).” Thankfully, I managed to avoid cholera and made it to the fertile Willamette Valley.

Eventually the ferry came, we boarded, and began our adventure out of the US. This is where the first misadventure officially took off. You see, I am a magnet for really outgoing, really odd people. Wherever I go, I always end up having someone who’s not exactly “all there” befriend me. Examples include Bruce Miller and the crazy woman outside Safeco Field the last time I went to a game with Lauren. This time was no different. I was standing at the bow of the ferry with Wells, minding my own business, watching the slowly approaching island grow in size, when I overheard a woman talking WAY too loud on her cell phone. Of course, I turned to Wells and mimicked her in my best woman voice, which in turn drew the same reaction from Wells. Here’s where the story is supposed to end.

In this case, the girl eventually sidled up next to me, and began to talk. I wasn’t really sure at first if she was talking to me, or just talking, so I did what anyone would do – I ignored her. Eventually, it became clear she was indeed talking to me. I responded the requisite series of “oh yeahs” and “reallys” and “uh-huhs” – the types of comments that clearly have no other outcome than to provoke further conversation. “Where are you from?” she asked. “Portland,” I responded.

In the next half hour I learned the following things:

• She is originally from Port Angeles, but is going to a college in Victoria, where she has no friends because the girls are really snotty.
• She is meeting a friend in Victoria, where her friend happens to be vacationing.
• The friend is with a fiance, which this girl feels is insane because the friend is entirely too young to be getting married.
• The Port Angeles native misses her boyfriend, who lives in Utah.
• A boy on the ferry looks like her boyfriend – this depresses her.
• She will be turning 20 in five days.
• She really has no plans tonight, aside from seeing her friend and the fiance.

In this half hour, I really didn’t say much… Wells can attest to this. She mentioned how much she liked Portland, and all its lighthouses (?), and how her friend was going to the University of Oregon – the one in Corvallis – the Ducks.

I really didn’t know what to make of her. She looked rather Eskimo-ish in nature, with her giant parka ensconcing any hint of a figure, or face that she may have had, and her ramblings made me think either she was crazy, or lonely, or friendly, or desperate. After a while, it began to seem as though she just wanted to drink with someone, and I was the lucky guy.

About the time this realization came to mind, Wells had overheard that people with cars could go to the lower deck to prepare for landfall. We made our escape, and proceeded to reminisce about what had just taken place. Essentially, I learned everything about this girl, save for her name. Wells was fairly certain she was crazy, or in love. I wasn’t sure on either, but I did think she wanted to get together to drink. Regardless, we were on the lower deck, in my car, and she was somewhere up above. Soon we were on Canadian land, and the girl was in my past.

Wells and I had talked about how every trip ends up having a story – I suggested that possibly my would-be suitor had the makings of a story. He scoffed, and hoped out loud that this was not the most interesting thing to happen on this journey.

We made it though the Canadian border checkpoint with nary a word from the nice Canadian guard, and began to search first for gas, then for a room to sleep in. After getting both (though I still have absolutely no clue how much gas I got, or what it cost, for that matter) we decided it was time to explore.

Downtown Victoria was very different – it was sort of the way I imagine some parts of Great Britain would be like, the downtown parts, I guess… There were pubs, and tobacconists, and more pubs. There was the parliament building with its copper-topped dome and the Empress Hotel with its copper roof accents, and the charming street people begging for pieces of – you guessed it, nickel-plated steel, which Canada has used for most of their coins since 2000.

After about an hour or so of wandering, and accidentally stumbling upon, of all things, John Lennon’s Rolls-Royce, we decided it was time to find food. After debating the merits of various menus, we settled on Elephant and Castle, an establishment at which Wells had previously dined. The evening was off the a good start – I was cruising through my Barbeque chicken, garlic potatoes and green beans, when I suddenly had my breath taken out of me.

I was working on a mouth full of green beans and was mid-chew, when I looked up from my plate to see a familiar face – the woman from the ferry.

She had been escorted by our waiter to the table beside ours, and soon took up residence with her friend and the ill-advised fiancé. It was like seeing old friends, only we really knew nothing about each other, and had only one memory upon which we could reminisce.

“How weird!” she exclaimed. “Sure is,” I mumbled, still chewing.

The waiter asked if we knew each other, and she replied that yes, we did. We rode the ferry in together this afternoon. How strange it would be that we would eat at the same restaurant, in the same section, seated by the same waiter, sitting right next to each other.

I smiled, and asked for another gin and tonic, and began to reminisce with my old acquaintance about that sea voyage we had shared way back in ought three o’clock pm. The friend thought this was the strangest occurrence as well, though funny-strange, as opposed to the creepy-strange I was feeling. The fiancé looked ambivalent to the whole situation, and Wells, he looked rather amused.

Dinner progressed, as did the conversation. She learned my name while introducing Wells and I to the friend and fiancé, and I learned hers while listening in on a phone call the friend was having with her mom. Her name was Carly, and she looked significantly thinner, fit, and more feminine without 40-some odd pounds of parka and a fur-covered face. Still, the situation was simply too strange for me to get over. I had another drink – a rum and coke, and Wells continued to get a sick pleasure out of the non-sequitors being thrown my direction by Carly, who a that time was frustrated by the fact that she someday wanted children, but hated babies – a feeling being stoked by the crying infant near the entrance to the restaurant. From the tone of the conversation, she really hated babies.

Wells began to play with his cell phone – odd, I thought, until I caught on to what he was doing.

Carly continued to talk, about something, I imagine… I was drinking, you see. Wells proceeded to put away the cell phone, eventually drawing out his digital camera.

“Oh, you have a camera?” Carly asked, somewhat excitedly. “Yeah, want me to take your picture?” asked Wells, while pointing it at her. She struck her best “I’m sitting at a table” pose, and in an instant, Wells had documented the surreal moment.

Another half hour or so went by, filled with musings on how much schoolwork sucks, and how much Carly wanted to drink when she got back to her place, which was not far away. Oh- and how she was going to be twenty in five days. Wells and I were videotaped by the fiancé, I imagine for the same reason Wells took Carly’s picture – to document an odd encounter with a stranger, who for some reason, was not a stranger, despite being more than strange.

After a few more drinks, and within about twenty minutes of the restaurant’s closing time, I decided it was time to move on. Carly was not yet done eating, so our paths would soon be diverging, however, I felt if it was meant to be, they would meet again, as they had already once before. Wells and I left, walked around the corner, and quickly burst into laughter. Somewhere between the fit of laughter and the hotel room, I vowed that if I were to bump into Carly again, in a town of roughly 75,000 on an island upon which I had never stepped before, I would at once propose marriage, because while I was not terribly attracted to her or enthralled by her conversation, it would undoubtedly be destiny.

Alas, that third meeting never came. Wells and I left Vancouver Island the next day, bound for mainland British Columbia. With the mainland came the realization that my search for divinely placed love would have to continue – perhaps a blessing in disguise, as I would have a hard time explaining to the United States government which portion of my $800 customs exception the bride was occupying.

Speaking of customs – one should not try bribing US border guards.

One final misadventure came via Chris Wells, who, upon re-entry to the US, produced his passport and handed it, via my window, to the waiting customs agent. The agent, upon opening the front cover of the small booklet, shot me a look of utter contempt.

“Is this yours?” the agent asked. I looked at Wells, then back at the agent, in time to see him slowly tilt the passport in my direction, exposing a neatly folded one dollar bill tucked inside the front cover of Wells’ identification.

“Oh yeah, sorry,” Wells replied, reaching for the bill. After a careful once-over, and a question of if we had anything to declare, (“some chips, a bottle of Jägermeister, and this hat” was my reply. “A bottle of whiskey… and a teddy bear” was Wells’… yeesh…) he waved us through the border, and back onto familiar ground. Looking back, I think Wells’ goal was to have the car searched. If at first the dollar bribe (unintentional, he insists) didn’t work, the teddy bear comment would surely do the trick.

Ultimately, we made it home safely, without any body parts being violated by the US government, and with only one of us engaged. I’m just glad Wells hadn’t pulled that crap with a Looney.