An Adventure in Spirit and Road: Canada and Alaska, Part 2

Running the Symbolic Gauntlet, Part 2

**I’m reposting this because I accidentally only sent to paid subs.

*Read Part 1 here

*Read Part 3 here

*Read Part 4 here

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In order to drive to Alaska you have to, of course, push through Canada. I’d had a complex relationship with Canada since 2009, when I was 26. A buddy I’d met on the road, from Austria, and I were thumbing around Maine. We’d met in New York City, had spent some time together there, and then had decided to thumb through Maine, into Quebec, and then hitchhike back west across lower Canada where, in Vancouver, we’d slip back south into the USA.

Things did not go according to plan.

Long story short: They did not like the look of two sketchy twenties guys—one covered in tattoos—wearing heavy packs and looking filthy, trying to hitchhike through the Canadian border. They had questions. Lots of them. But it was the DUI I’d gotten in 2003—six years prior—which doomed me. A DUI for Canadian entry requires a 10 year waiting period before you can again enter the country.

Fast-forward to 2014. A decade ago. I was 31, driving solo to attend a writers’ conference in Surrey, near Vancouver, B.C. Though it’d then ben eleven years since my 2003 DUI (which, by the way, had been lowered to an infraction), I was forced to pull over at the border, go into the office, and was harassed by two border guards playing good cop/bad cop with me for over an hour. They looked at my phone and asked for the code, scrolling and looking at texts. They had me take my shirt off and snapped photos of all my tattoos. They asked me if I was in a gang, if I planned on committing a crime in Canada. They asked me to describe in detail “what happened” in 2003. Exasperated and humiliated, I answered the questions robotically.

Finally, unable to endure any more, I told the “good cop”: Look, I’m 4 years sober. I used to be a blackout drinker. I don’t know all these details. I got a DUI. It is what  it is. This is ridiculous. Either let me in or don’t, but stop this madness.

They let me in, but said that if I wanted to enter the country again, I’d have to get the DUI removed.

In 2018 I did just that; I got the DUI from 2003 removed.

Now, in 2024, the DUI was over 21 years old. But I had PTSD from the two previous experiences, and my adrenaline rushed when I thought of the border. Yet I also know that when fear comes up, the only way out is through. You have to face fear, otherwise it’ll sit in your stomach like carbolic acid; it’ll eat you.

*

Portland—where I have been spending time at since 2006, and where I briefly lived for 8 months when I first got sober in 2010—was fun. We met up with my real estate friend. We walked around the trendy Hawthorne Ave, getting food and drink. My friend toured us around our new home (we’d bought it sight unseen, with a video, FaceTime, calls, inspections and specialists to look at the roof, foundation, etc).

We had already seen dozens of photos of the house of course. We knew it was solid. But actually being inside we immediately fell in love with it. We decided right there: We were going to move into the new place (the downstairs unit) until we moved to Spain in January. We’d rent out the upper unit, and Britney’s Lompoc house, and do some minor work on the new place and find tenants to replace us, etc.

We felt incredibly excited. Life was a tantalizing adventure. We weren’t condemned to the typical bourgeoise existence we felt constrained by, living life a certain way because we were “supposed” to. Why? According to who? Where is the rule which states this? Says who?

We got Thai food with my real estate friend. We met up with a writer friend of mine who happened to also be in Portland, up from the Bay Area. She and her son had taken the train, as I’d done many times in my own past. We explored the area around our house, which is gorgeous. We’re near Sellwood, in SW Portland, very close to the spectacular, Harvard-like Reed College, with the massive castle-like building jutting up in all its antiquarian glory, complete with massive, verdant lawns. By that was a lovely golf course. Sellwood was really snazzy. We felt great about it.

*

On August 9, we headed out, north from Portland. The final two days in town had been frustrating. We were supposed to close on my house (and then immediately on the Portland place) on 8/6 but, due to a holdup on the buyer’s side for my house, the close date was extended to 8/8, and then a second time to 8/9. We were waiting for the county to record the deed, my agent said.

I was frustrated and impatient for closing to happen. We’d gone to Powell’s Books at 1005 Burnside—that Mecca of bookstores—and I salved my ego by drinking Macha and reading one of my purchases, Steven Pinker’s, The Better Angels of Our Nature, a book I’d wanted to read for a decade.

We walked back to the car and took off, weaving across Portland to I-5 north. Soon we were crossing over the Columbia River and into Washington State.

*

We closed on the Bay Area house, late the night of 8/8, while on the road, and then the next morning we closed on the Portland place. The money then came into our checking account, the most we’d ever seen. Soon, we knew, most of that money would be gone to pay off our debts. But we’d have respectable savings left and a new rental investment to gain monthly income from, with much lower property taxes and overhead than the Bay Area house.

It was, finally, over. I’d been working on this thing since mid-May, nearly 3 months.  It had been absolutely spiritually and emotionally exhausting. But it was done.

We camped 8/8 only a couple hours north of Portland, at a little “Hip Camp” spot (tent/car camping spot) in Southern Washington. It was fantastic. We did the usual routine, with MRE’s and setting up the tent, reading, etc. The next morning we did more of the same, then packed up and took off.

It took us several hours on multiple small highways—and  a stop in a tiny Washington town at a perfect greasy spoon—until we arrived at the Canadian border at last. Well, here it was. I felt terrified. Silently, in my head, as we neared the little customs kiosk I said the Serenity Prayer and the AA Big Book 3rd Step prayer multiple times each. I tried to let go of my expectations and hopes, to be in the “enormous present,” as Norman Mailer writes in his seminal 1957 essay, The White Negro, and to breathe slow and easy. But my heart thudded and my blood pumped. I was scared. It wasn’t like I’d get arrested or anything, I reminded myself for the 100thtime. I knew it was simply a physical PTSD reaction. I’d felt totally humiliated last time.

The line was very short. We were not entering Vancouver; we were a little east of that, off Highway 9, through Sumas, which would turn into Trans-Canada Highway 1. Two motorcyclists were ahead of us; that was all. It seemed to be a father and son. The father went through first, quick and easy. The son was slower. The customs officer asked him several questions. They went back and forth. The kid took his helmet off and faced the guard. The kid got off his bike and searched for something in one of his side paniers. He got back on. They talked a little more. And then, finally, he motored off.

It was our turn. I was driving. My sleeves were pulled up exposing my tattoos: Scared as I was, I wanted to be fully accepted on my terms. I wasn’t going to hide who I was.

Tattoos weren’t illegal. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was a good, law-abiding citizen. The DUI was from 21 years ago.

We pulled up. The customs officer was an older man, maybe late 50s, short white hair, stern expression, no smiling, with his black uniform and duty belt, gun and Mace hanging off the side. My heart thudded loudly in my chest.

“Passports,” he said.

*Part 3 coming soon!