Important things to remember when crossing a border

There are a few things that I like to check before crossing an international border.

1. Passport
2. Visa
3. Pants (it's important to wear pants I believe)

Unfortunately someone neglected to check one of the above items before we crossed the border into the USA. I'll give you a hint, it wasn't me, and it wasn't items 1 or 3.

Of course, having assumed that everyone's visas were in order, I had come completely unprepared to provide any documentation proving we weren't Mexican and intending to stay in the country and work for below-minimum wage. So we spent a delightful 2 or so hours in the border post at Blaine until finally, it was sort of ok.

So Kat now has until July 24th to leave the USA, which kind of throws a bit of a spanner in the works, but we'll get it sorted.... at least they let us in to the country, otherwise we could have been hanging around Vancouver for a while.

Ironically, we only made it to Bellingham - we'd discussed staying there, but decided to press onto Seattle. Fate obviously decided otherwise.

Friday is the most important day of the week, because the last season of Battlestar Galactica is running. I decided to tackle the job of setting up the satellite dish. Man was that fun. The compass we got in our "satellite finder kit" has got to be the shittiest compass in the universe, and I couldn't figure out how to make the satellite finder thing work properly. All it does it make a loud, high-pitched noise, which is guaranteed to annoy you while you try to work.

A couple of hours later, and with 40 minutes to spare, I managed to get it up and running.

Man is BSG good this season. I have no idea how they're going to finish it off and maintain the intensity of the first few episodes. I guess if we have to wait until 2009 for the last half of the season they have plenty of time to get it right.

Given we were already here, we decided to stay in Bellingham and check it out the next day, and I'm glad we did, because it's a pretty nice place. We drove to downtown and wandered around. There was a farmers market in progress (with a little too much market, and not enough farming) and you could smell the ecologically friendly stench of affluence. Katmandu clothing anyone?

I'm not sure why, but there's tulips everywhere. It's very pretty.


There was a nice condominium development with tulips in boxes out the front.


More tulips.


Tulip with wasp.


We walked from downtown to Fairhaven, which is about 4 miles, and stopped on a park bench to have some lunch in the sun. It was very pleasant.

No this is not a picture of a discarded wheel from the turd.


Of course the RV parts place was closed, so STILL no hope in sight of fixing the bloody plumbing.

Today (Sunday) we're heading down to Seattle!