Cannucked---Part 3

(Parts One Here, Part Two Here)

We were straight profiled at the border, and ole Johnny Cannuck sent us over to immigration. It needs to be noted however that Brandon and Jared both answered "no" when asked if they'd passed through Canadian immigration before even though they had not a full two months before flown into Toronto.
"I thought we just went through customs." Brandon innocently whined as I berated him for his unfortunate lack in travel experience outside of the greater Conyers, Georgia metropolitan area.
Thus we went through the same drill again I had passed through in September when driving the film gear across....at the exact same location. This time however we were forced to wait in the cold while a female Mountie took out my personal luggage to run through an X-Ray. When she pulled my bags out to do this, she disrupted the delicate packing balance causing other bags to spill out onto the ground. I tried to keep from getting upset, having to remind myself of the Canadian policy of giving important jobs to mentally retarded people.
After Daisy Do-wrong shoved our stuff haphazardly back into the van, we were directed into the immigration office where we encountered, as our producer ole Greasy would later call him,
"That Dudley Do-Right Mother F***Ker."
He was a nice enough guy, but in that utterly incompetent way that caused him to make us sit in the office for half an hour while he fiddled away on the computer. My guess, to this day, is that he discovered The Free-Lancer and could only read a few words. In all likelihood he saw "Canada", "Sucks", and "Terrorist" somewhere in the posts and decided there and then that he was having none of it. Whatever the case may be, after an interminable wait he informed us that without work permits we wouldn't be able to enter Canada. No amount of protest or reasoning could dissuade him because like all robots he was programmed to do one thing, and he could not deviate from his directive. Thus we were forced to "voluntarily" leave Canada and return across the bridge to Port Huron, Michigan.

We called Ole Greasy, and he was understandably upset at the development. He babbled on about how he would charter a plane to get the equipment in and send us across at Detroit (the American Border Guard on our side warned us not to try to reenter at Detroit because that would be considered "port shopping" and would lead to criminal charges. Go figure.) Ole Greasy even managed to get hold of the Canadian border patrol by phone using the drug snitch line, but he couldn't get us and the equipment across, and since we were no good to anybody without the cameras and such it was a no-go. We had been completely Cannucked over.

We were stuck for the night in Michigan, with our plans foiled by the Hosers on the border. The next morning we escaped without being snowed in, but the drive back was hellacious to say the least. Brandon and I spent the next night in Chicago where I ate a surprisingly decent meal of Shrimp and Grits.

Our troubles were not over however, as we had a ridiculous circus with Budget Rental when the next morning our electronic key for the van decided to quit working. We had hoped to head back to Atlanta at 9 in the morning, but ended up waiting until 2 for a new, more lame (not Satellite Radio), van to be brought to us at the hotel.
We finally made it back to Atlanta around 3 in the morning four days after setting out, the trip itself being an utter failure. We drove around in snow storms, got Cannucked at the border, and returned to the blessed South with nothing to show for it but some money (we still got paid at least) and a timelapse video we took of the drive from Chicago to Atlanta which I will post later.
The moral of the story? Canada sucks.