Vehemently Vitriolic

The annual pilgrimage down to San Francisco. Every year my wife and I head on down to see her great aunt (or “The Trust Fund” as my father in-law likes to say) at “the home”. Its always an entertaining trip, fraught with peril, surprises, tears….maybe even a life lesson or two. Yes, its like one large after school special.

Last year when we went, we drove down to Seattle and got on Southwest (which was an interesting trip seeing as we had never flown Southwest before and hence were not aware of the cattle-call like system they have apparently perfected, nor the much-coveted “A” ticket, which, from what I saw when we were given such manna from heaven, there have been minor wars over). On the way home, Southwest lost our luggage. Not a big deal…we had planned on staying the night in Seattle anyway. The lady was very apologetic, and must have figured we were Canadians when we offered to come pick oit up from the airport tomorrow morning on our way home. For this, we got a $100 gift certificate. It was due to expire this year, so we thought well, we may as well use it up.

Off we went down to the border. My wife and rarely get more than a glance when we head across the border. This is becuase my wife has figured out that the border gaurds asking the questions tend to be on the drivers-side. And I have a very bad tendency to say exceedingly stupid things when I talk to said guards, such as the following discourse that took place a number of years ago on one of our first trips across the border:

Border guard: “Do you have any guns, sir?”
Me: “No, why do I need one? I’ve heard America is kinda rough…..”
Guard: “Pull over there sir.”
Me: “Crap” (more…)