Monday 29 April 2013

151 Back into the USA

Sunday 28th April Miles Today 141 Total 1299

We set off South today and towards the US border. It was a relatively short 15 mile trip in brilliant sunshine and it was 24 deg C (75F). We rode over the "Peace Bridge" and into the US border post.


The queue for the border controls.
We had about a 10 minute wait in the queue and were attended to by a rookie border official. He was a surly miserable git and did not listen when we told him what we were doing. He did not believe us when we said we only had about $100 dollars on us and when he did listen did not seem to comprehend what we had said. He did the same 'Try to read the plate with the camera' thing and having failed, instead of asking us decided to come out of his booth to look at the plate.  He was clearly getting agitated and came out of his booth to inspect our number plate. On looking at our plate he said "You bought this from  England ?". He then ran off and asked a Canadian Border official what he should type into the 'Number Plate' box on his computer. Whilst he was sorting this he spilled his coffee over his desk and keyboard. He then lightened up and accused me of making him spill his coffee to which I stupidly replied "Oh no I didn't, you did that all by yourself". I Got the obligatory dig in the ribs that said "Shut up - idiot". The bruise will fade in a day or so !
We were then released and he completely blanked me when I said "Have a nice day". We then rode off giggling to ourselves.

After riding for an hour or so we started passing a lot of classic cars and then came upon a sort of fete in a small town. Part of it was a classic car rally.


One of the disadvantages of a point and shoot camera on the move.
A while later the GPS took us down a dirt road. It was apparent that I had missed a turning and it was trying to make the best of a bad situation.


Normally this would not be a problem, especially considering the type of bike we are on, the problem was, it ended in a dead end that the GPS was unaware of. We ended up turning around in someones garden desperately trying to avoid the daffodils.

We then went in search of a coffee and the cosy bar cum restaurant we found, had a TV showing that the weather where we were was just about to turn nasty so we asked the barman if he knew of a place to stay and ended up in a lovely little smallholding and even managed to park Wallace in a shed beside the obligatory snowmobile. Here we settled for the night ready for the next part of our journey.

An American Robin, it is the size of a blackbird, everything's big in America !

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