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The show ended surprisingly early, and I was feeling pretty pumped up from the show and thought I could drive a little, so rather than stay in Portland, Mike and I jumped in the car and decided to just drive as much as we could. I just love that big, pretty bridge that you go through to get to Portland, especially at nighttime. We drove back into Washington, and stayed the night in Vancouver, WA, and a pretty unremarkable hotel.
The next morning, we hit a local Safeway for some throat lozenges. I wasn't sure if I was coming down with a cold, or if my throat was just sore from two nights of smoky clubs and cheering like crazy. When we first walked inside, we saw the gumball machines in the opening walkway and we HAD to try the Simpsons gumball machine --- it dispenses cute tiny lil' bobbleheads with adhesive feet so you can stick 'em on your car! We have one of these in the arcade of our local bowling alley, and scored both Lisa and Apu. We got Lisa again, darn it, but oh well! Mike got some coffee, and I got some tea for my aching throat, and we hit the road.
While at Powell's, we found a used copy of David Sedaris' "Holidays on Ice" on tape, read by David, his hysterical sister Amy, and Ann Magnuson. Cool! It definitely made our drive back North more fun and amusing! We, sadly, stopped in Tacoma, WA, for lunch at the Tacoma Mall. It was at this point that my "fun vacation mood" began to dampen. Back when I did merchandising for Wet Seal, I used to have to come to this mall. So being back in familiar territory, especially one so fraught with cruddy-work-related-emotion, was bumming me out hardcore. We had a gross-as-hell food court lunch, jumped back in the car, resumed listening to David's quirky lisping voice, but I was still in a funk. And then driving through Seattle, it definitely felt too familiar. Grumble, grumble...
But then, before we knew it, we were coming up to the Canadian border, and I started to get nervous. All I had was an expired passport, and from what our friends had told us, the border patrol was really strict. Chris even told me that his sister-in-law had gotten lectured by one of the patrolmen. I don't like being lectured, so I was really scared. I didn't have my birth certificate on me either, just some car registration papers that I didn't know if they were going to accept, but I had 'em just in case. We edged closer and closer up to the checkpoint. Finally, we were up.
"Reason for visit?" the guard asked me. "We're going to a concert tonight, and then sight-seeing tomorrow," I replied in my best see-how-innocent-we-are? voice, praying he wasn't noticing the expiration dates on our passports. "What concert?" he asked. Just as brightly, I responded, "Yo La Tengo!"
"Who?"
Tee hee. His voice was muffled for a second, but then he reappeared at the check-out window and said, "Oh, this guy says he knows who that is..." pointing his thumb in the direction of an unseen checkout companion. And with that, he sent us off on our way!
Driving in another country made me giddy, even if it was only Canada. The mileage signs are all posted in kilometers, which kept tripping me up! It was awkward to look at the different set of numbers on the odometer. And there was hardly anyone else on the road either. At one point, I had a momentary-freakout and questioned if I was even driving on the right side of the road! It was all very surreal and giddy at first, but then I calmed down. :)