At the end of the Northern Hemisphere winter in 2002 I am traveling from Vancouver to Los Angeles by train. Well, Vancouver to Seattle by bus, then Seattle to Los Angeles by train. I realize that long distance trips on a train are a crapshoot depending on what country you are in. There is loads of intrigue and fun associated with train travel in Europe. That is always a plus. On several occasions as a teenager I travel home from boarding school by train in Australia. Those experiences held little in the way of intrigue and nothing in the way of fun. Australian rail is to enjoyable transport as unrestricted political contributions are to honest governance. On my first trip, I phone my parents after 15 hours of suffering while at the half way point in Rockhampton, begging for them to buy me a plane ticket for the rest of the journey. I would rather be castrated with plastic utensils by a sadist with drinking tremors than spend the remaining 15 hours on the train. My parents didn't give me the option.
Trains in the USA could either be European champagne, or Aussie shit sandwiches. I will soon learn that they are only marginally better than what I experienced in Australia. My trip down the west coast takes place on the Coast Starlight which leaves Seattle’s King Street Station at 9 a.m. This means, when I have a six-hour bus ride from Vancouver to the Seattle I must be up at an ungodly hour in Vancouver. If my designated seat on the Coast Starlight is placed adjacent to the members of Swedish bikini team I still won’t board the Coast Starlight in a happy frame of mind.
The night before I am due to travel south I stay in the closest youth hostel I can find to the Vancouver bus station. When you appreciate the environment of neighborhoods in North America that have bus stations then you will know I am the most petrified man in the world. American cities have suburbs the police don’t want to enter. The US Marine Corp run simulated war zone military exercises in these neighbourhoods. Coincidentally, these are not the suburbs that have Louis Vuitton stores and a Starbucks on every corner. These suburbs are where the city planners put bus stations. I suspect it may be part of a wider conspiracy on behalf of Delta and American Airlines to encourage air travel.
Bussing out of Vancouver it takes an hour to make it to the US Border. Here the passengers depart the bus, file through US customs, climb back onto the bus, and the journey continues. The day I arrive at the border I coincidentally stand in line behind two other Australians. Random luck. Both live illegally in Los Angeles while they pursue acting careers. They came to Vancouver for a week to catch up with mates from home and now the pair is headed back to L.A. They step forward to the Immigration Officer as they are travelling together. I stay in my spot. Any learned sociologist could explain to a customs agent that if I am not travelling with someone then I generally wouldn’t do the same things they do.
Alarm bells go off, or whatever it is that goes off when agents detect an illegal alien entering the country. Nowadays the borders are equipped with Jack-in-the-Box Trump figurines that pop up and cry, 'you're Mexican, go home.' After waking up a half hour before I went to bed this morning I am so exhausted I barely fathom I am standing in the Border Protection Facility. The two Australians are told they cannot enter the country and must return to Canada. They trudge outside to the cold and slush to wait three hours for the northbound bus to pick them up and take them back to Vancouver. I barely pay the commotion a half moment’s thought. Then I step forward.
‘Are you with them?’ asks the female official.
‘Who? No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I think we just happen to be travelling on the same bus,’ I reply.
‘You talk the same as them.’
‘There is a whole country of people who talk the same as this. I think 25 million of us, maybe more,’ I tell her. 'I have no idea what the actual number is. It is not my job to keep count.'
‘I have reason to believe you are with them. I saw you talking with them in line,’ she persists with her insinuating line of interrogation.
To a US border agent, a tourist engaging in conversation with anyone standing around them in a line shows an obvious implication of life long collusion in any number of hundreds of illegal acts. ‘Why are you travelling on the bus?’ She asks. Apparently overlooking the fact that to wake at 2am to walk a mile through snow and wind in a blight infested suburb for a six-hour bus ride is no one's idea of a bloody good time. This is when I play my trump card.
‘I am not with them. They have Australian passports, I don’t. I have a completely different country on my passport.’ I slide my New Zealand passport, courtesy of my parent’s birthright, across the desk that separates me from the 300-pound African American customs agent. She doesn't look at it before she slides it straight back.
‘Tell someone who cares. You are with them and you are not going to be allowed into the country.’
Thanks love for the kick in the pants. Apparently, this is legal. When it comes to gaining access to the USA through the legal means of not crawling through a tunnel from Mexico, if an immigration agent has a bad day for any reason the hapless traveler will cop the brunt of it. Today, the brunt of it is a three hour wait in the cold for a one-hour bus ride back to a sister suburb of Beirut in downtown Vancouver. If it is possible for a shitty day centered around the prospect of being crammed into a train seat for a 36-hour nightmare to get worse, then it just did.
I and the two other Aussies waiting for the return ride north are distraught. Scratch that, I am the only one distraught. Most people readily accept things like this as being out of their control. Not me. I am pissed because I want to go back in to get into a shouting match with the immigration official to prove a point. I'm not sure what my point is, I just intend to yell loud enough so that no one can determine that I don't have a cohesive argument.
Meanwhile the other two Aussie boys take it all in stride. It is the end of their life-long dreams to make it as actors. Yet they jovially discuss how to organize flights home to Oz and whether to contact girlfriends in Los Angeles to let them know they are now single. My plans are in slightly more tatters. I need a calm week in Los Angeles to give me time to choose the right job to come back to the US with legally. Doing things in a hastily, non-thought out rush isn’t my style. It makes me nervous, and good decisions are seldom made when nervous. As when I almost flip the bird to the immigration official when she shows me the door. I am sure that would have been noted on my Interpol file. Simon Williams - international prick, detain at your leisure just to jerk him around.
I sweat on this thought during a sleepless night in the cheap, derelict hostel on the edge of oblivion. Eventually falling asleep for a semi peaceful hour and a half of kip. I desperately latch onto any shred of a comforting idea I can muster - the notion that I will surely be successful at crossing the border on my second attempt and be on the train the next morning. What happened this morning is a minor glitch. A slipup. These things occur all the time. I am not giving up, not by a long shot. Arrival in L.A. will still happen in short enough time to allow me to interview for a job and take care of business. Surely nothing can go wrong for a second time? Trudging through the snow at 1:30 am to the bus station I am in a positive enough frame of mind. I allow myself a skip here and there.
Bloody oath - part 2
The bus pulls into the parking lane in front of the border control building. I stare through my fogged window at the brightly lit interior of the immigration hall. The arrogant immigration official I ran into yesterday isn’t hard to spot. I am immediately worried she might have pulled someone off their shift, so she can be present again today. Yesterday she sent three people packing; she might suspect we may turn around the next day. Try to make another run at the border. Bloody hell! I would have rather crapped my pants barreling down a double black diamond run at Whistler than to crap my pants standing in front of Dolores Brown border protection agent. Not only have I taken a first up impression that she is mean, but she is also not an attractive looking person. She is, in fact, unspeakably unappealing. As unappealing as a virgin bride di
scovering her husband's genital warts on their wedding night.
I have never stood in line to be executed but I know what it feels like. Immigration lines at US borders are almost Orwellian in their dehumanizing of the participating travelers. Everyone steps forward together while maintaining the line in perfect symmetry and absolute silence. In a state of heightened awareness, I don’t stand near anyone who appears to be an immigration threat or a hobo. Travelling by bus this is damn near impossible. Everyone appears to be a hobo. My knees shake uncontrollably by the time I am the next person in line. I can already see Dolores smile devilishly as she recognizes me. I fully expect her to say, ‘I saw you bump into the man by the door that resembles Lee Harvey Oswald. You were the second gunman on the grassy knoll, weren’t you? You are not entering the States today you murderer.’
In a matter of minutes, I am presenting myself in front of her again. ‘Back again for another try, are we?’ Is her straightforward comment.
‘Yes sir… er… Ma'am… er your majesty!’ I proffer. Floor her with exultations and she will be obliged to do the same is my sudden strategy. ‘You look lovely today. Absolutely gorgeous’
Dolores doesn't blink, ‘not travelling with your friends today?’
At which point I break down into mindless babble. ‘I swear I didn’t know them. I don’t know them. I have never seen them before and will likely never again. If I do, I will run in the other direction. Please, please… pleeeeeaaassssee believe me.’
‘Oh, I do,’ says the suddenly cheerful Dolores.
The border agents probably have a weekly pool in which they bet how many adults they can each make flagellate themselves in absolute humiliation. The prize is no doubt a symbolic trophy and Dolores has shot into the lead for the week. ‘Passport please!’ She pleasantly demands. I gratefully, no gratefully is too feeble a word, with respectful humility I hand her my passport. Then drop to one knee and kiss her well-polished, black soled shoes.
‘Sir, you don’t have an entry visa in your passport,’ she snaps. Quickly reverting from her role as my new best mate, back into the wicked witch of the west.
‘A who?’ I gasp, ‘I swear I don’t know him either.’
‘Your entry visa? Where is it?’ She rifles through the pages of my passport again with a disapproving thumb.
I am too numb to answer, too numb to think. Three months before I was travelling around the US for a month. Then I came to Whistler. How did I first enter the USA if I didn’t have a visa? Is she looking in someone else’s passport? Is the diabetes from her weight problem affecting her eyesight so badly that she couldn’t see my entry visa with my passport shoved in her face? Is she simply fucking with me? Could she be looking to score extra points in the weekly pool after I throw myself on the cold floor and start begging again? She snaps my passport closed. Then hands it back to me with a snippy wave that indicates the area where I spent three hours shivering waiting for the Vancouver bound bus only a day before. Oh Crap. On your bike son.
Back in Vancouver I secure a bed for another night at the hostel. It is my fortuitous luck that abject desperation hasn’t set in with the homeless population of the city. They still prefer to be on the street rather than spend a single warm night in the cheapest dump of a refuge that has beds available. This afternoon I must find the New Zealand embassy to resolve my visa problems. At this rate Canada will be granting me honorary citizenship before I get entry into the US again. Cheer up mate. There are worse things than being stuck living in Canada for the rest of my life. I don't know what those worst things are, but I am sure they exist.
Suppressing my growing sense of concern, I trudge through the bitterly cold streets of downtown Vancouver to the New Zealand embassy. A quick clarification is needed on a point that has possibly been bugging readers with merely the faintest understanding of countries and nationality for the last page or so. I was born in Townsville in North Queensland. I look, sound, and talk like an Aussie. For good reason. I am as Australian as bushranger Ned Kelly taking a piss in an outhouse while bashing redback spiders with a rolled-up edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. The fact I travelled on my Mum’s passport as a child gave me eligibility to obtain a New Zealand passport when I turned 15. In 2002, it is much easier to travel the world with a Kiwi passport than an Aussie one. You need a visa to enter more countries as an Australian. Nowadays it is easier travelling pretending to be a Kiwi because their national cricket team hasn't recently been caught cheating. This means I don't get labelled a cheating Aussie bastard as often.
The polite, responsive staff at the New Zealand Embassy is more than helpful. They spare me the embarrassment of making a mockery of me forgetting the fact I informed you of in the last paragraph. They tell me I don’t need an entry visa for the United States. New Zealand is on the US visa waiver program. My passport, and my sunny cheerful personality should be all I need to make it across. Dolores must have been absent from class at Border Protection school on the day they taught that lesson.
This is an example of the Murphy's law of visa appointments. Show up with two folders filled with paperwork and documentation the consulate official handling your visa application will likely not even ask you your name. Show up with nothing, you will be asked to provide the consulate with your mother's birth certificate, proof of immunizations you have never heard of, and every school transcript dating back to kindergarten.
This is when I remember the conversation with Mum regarding what country passport I want when I turn 15. It is after a hissy fit I had playing backyard cricket with my older brother. I lock myself in my bedroom, threatening to never come out again. The week before, I threw a spaz at my brother for treating our backyard cricket games as if they were the bodyline series in 1932-33. I wanted to immigrate to India where I would only have to face spin bowling. Mum tells me that if I am so determined to be a world traveler that having a New Zealand passport will make it much easier to travel. For the exact reason I am too stupid to recall when facing a uniformed immigration officer with a chip on her shoulder the size of Ayers Rock.
Full of renewed confidence I am back on the bus at 2am the next morning. This time I am eager, virtually giddy, for Dolores to be there. Sure enough, there she is. Straining to be contained by her sharply pressed customs uniform behind a desk of the brightly lit immigration hall at the Peace Arch border crossing.
I stride into the building with certainty. Feeling confident enough to engage in brief discussion with several suspicious-looking, fellow bus travelers. My gaze never diverts from Dolores. If she looks up at the line of people I hope to lock her eyes with my determined impassive stare. I assuredly wait for the moment when we will again come face to face. Don't flinch, I tell myself. Feel assured. I am armed with knowledge.
My time comes. ‘Next victim,’ Dolores hisses, and I step forward with the self-confidence of a Spanish matador. No pushing me around today. Placing my passport firmly onto the counter my gaze doesn't waiver one millimeter from Dolores’ intimidating stare.
‘Ma'am, I need to inform you that there is no entry visa because New Zealand passport holders don’t need an entry visa. The country is on the visa waiv…’
She impassively stares at me, ‘anything else you want to say?’
‘Well, no. I am only telling you I don’t need a visa to get in. All I need is my passport.’
She smiles devilishly, ‘and an immigration agent who will let you in.’ She points my passport in the direction of the door that leads outside, for the return bus to Vancouver. ‘Next,’ she chortles.
Bloody hell! North American rail travel now rates at the bottom on my list of things to do in life. Below experiencing a Great White attack or listening to Kim Kardashian opinionate on how to self-douche correctly. And I haven’t ridden on the train yet.
I am not panic stricken as I walk from the bus station to the hostel. I am numb. The hostel staff greet me by name. Maybe I should reserve a bed on the weekly rate. I might need it that long. But, I am not going to q
uit. I am going to spend the rest of my life negotiating this bloody border crossing if it takes that long. Probably is as good a time as any to get rip roaring drunk, except I may miss tomorrow's bus to the border facility. If I did catch it Dolores might then deny me entry to the States for being hung-over. She knows all the tricks. That woman always brings her A-game. Then so must I. Tomorrow I must be as nimble as a stream and as smart as a rock to get past her.
The walk to the bus depot the next morning starts to feel routine. I throw out a couple of high fives to the now familiar homeless people who have their hands out looking for food. I am so thankful I only paid for a single fare to Los Angeles, yet Greyhound keeps accepting my ticket as good for ‘attempting’ travel. I can't recall what day of the week it is. It might be Thursday. Maybe Monday. It could be Easter Sunday for all I know. All my belongings are securely packed in my backpack as they have been for the last few days. A ten-carat diamond ring weighs down my pocket as I have devised a plan so cunning that Oscar Wilde would have been impressed. When I arrive to Dolores at the immigration desk I will fall on one knee and ask her to marry me. Only a despicable, callous person would send their fiancée back to Canada. Dolores must be mid-forties, unattractive, with an easy 150 pounds of excess body tissue. What other options for matrimony can she possibly have? However, I still judge my odds of this scheme working at slightly under 50/50.
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