#23: Go Bargain Hunting with Friends Stateside

Having an entire weekend off is very rare for a person with three part time jobs, such as myself. So when I found out that I had both a Saturday AND a Sunday off at the end of January, I snatched up two of my best friends (who have regular jobs with normal weekends) and forced them to hang out with me. We decided to cross the border and go shopping at the outlets in Niagara Falls, USA, and at the gigantic mall in Buffalo.  

Shoes! Does wonders for the feet! 

Supposedly, the prices are better in the States, but this time I didn’t find that there was much of a difference. I just enjoyed going to different shops and seeing products that aren’t available here. For example: Coconut mocha K-cups, and Pilsbury cake mixes.  I also ended up getting some new jeans, a dress, some candles, a Lush bubble bar, and some jewellery.

My goods 

Now, I did not take that picture just to make y’all jealous of all my fun new stuff. I also took it because any minute now the Canada Border Services agency may come take me to prison and I’ll need evidence of exactly what was in my car at the time I crossed the border.

Even though I’m not a criminal and I’m not smuggling anything, I still get nervous going through immigration and customs. They’ve got listening devices and mean agents and guns and stuff, man! Here’s what happened. We crossed back into Canada at Fort Erie, around 10pm or so. At the end of the short interrogation about our origin and purchases, the guy says “Ok, you can go on through, numbers 12, 13, and 14 are open” and hands me back our passports and a yellow slip of paper with some scribbles on it.

So it is dark out, my windows are covered in winter road grime, and as I drive through the first checkpoint I have no idea where “12, 13, and 14” are, or even if the guy was referring to the gates in front of me or not. I can only see that the gates on the left say 6, 7, 8, and so I figure if I go to the gates further on the right I’ll probably be at “12, 13, 14”. I drive up, we are asked to pay $3, the gate opens, and I drive off without ever paying customs on all our sweet America merch.  

As we drive off, my friends (who had crossed the border recently) are like “Ahh, we were supposed to pay customs! We have to go back!” but as soon as you leave the gate, you are on a highway – so all I could really do was keep driving off, a fugitive of the law with two hostages. I half expected to be chased down the highway by a bunch of customs cops, but nothing happened. I just kept driving until we got to my parents' cottage on Lake Erie, where we stayed for the night wringing our hands and watching Downton Abbey.   

Granny is amused at my predicament

So my next few posts will probably be written on some toilet paper in a jail cell.   

**Edit: Hooray, I’m not going to prison! I called the Fort Erie customs place and they basically just laughed at me for being so honest. Well, first they kind of messed with me and were like “Soooo... you’re telling me that you are what we call a customs runner? That’s pretty serious!” It took me a couple seconds to get that he was joking. Apparently I’m not the only dorkus mcmorkus who has missed the customs booth, and since we wouldn’t have had to pay a big fee just for bringing in some clothes and junk anyways, they said not to worry about it.

So even though I got away with it (honest mistake!), always pay your customs, folks. They keep cool dudes like the one I talked to on the phone employed.