Post #3978318

2026-07-21 05:51 UTC

Very very long #travel post from the way-off-the-beaten-path side of things. My own experiences of being 21-22. And yes, I love running my own instance because to hell with the default character limit haha. Even if it's still not long enough. Here goes: You know how, at the end of Good Will Hunting, he's off to "go see about a girl?" I love that, and think young people absolutely should head off on adventures to go see about a person they've taken a fancy to. If you make it - and most of us do - you'll have some great stories to tell, even if it doesn't tend to work out so great with the whole person you've taken a fancy to. So anyhow have you ever crossed an international border by accident? Like you planned to do it the right way but ended up accidentally crossing the border without checking in? Yeah, I've done that two times and almost (I guess technically not almost) a third. Both times it was to see about a girl. A different girl, because I was young then and young men are as foolhardy as they are fickle. But both times it was to see about a girl. True story. First time, I met a girl who was up visiting from an expat village outside Puerto Vallarta. She went back home and we traded letters, and with her encouragement I planned to head down there and see what's good. I was able to catch a ride down to LA and had planned to cross the border in Mexicali because Tijuana's nuts and also Mexicali had a better train connection. I arrived in LA and went to the Greyhound station the next morning. Departing downtown Los Angeles at 9:30 and arriving in Calexico at 1:30, actually pretty good for the dusty dog. I bought my ticket. And got on the bus. And headed off into a grand tour of the Palm Desert and Imperial Valley. At some point I realized that the timetables were in 24-hour time, which meant I was only partway through a 16-hour bus ride, the end of which would find me in a border town right around the same time as the bars close. This actually worked out pretty OK - the guy sitting next to me was from Mexicali and was going to visit his parents. Their house wasn't far from the border, he figured one of his folks would give me a ride to the train station and help me find a hotel. This was probably a huge stroke of luck - I certainly thought it was - and was definitely better than fending for myself. We made it to the border closer to two in the morning, got our stuff and walked to the border. There was a turnstile. We walked through it. There was a kind of market but of course all the stalls were closed. There was another turnstile. My friggin savior turns to me and says "Welcome to Mexico." That was it - I had crossed into Mexico without talking to anybody from the government about entering their country. Everything that night went as promised - I got a ride to a hotel by the train station, the guy's dad told me where to go change money in the morning, the motel took dollars, I slept a bit. Next morning I changed money, bought my premier especial ticket at the train station, and was promptly kicked out of the country by the first customs agent I met. It took him maybe 30 seconds to size me up and decide my one-way ticket to Puerto Vallarta and general lack of a credit card or extra money didn't mean I was going to buy some trinkets, get drunk on the beach, and go home. So that kinda sucked, and it didn't work out with the girl. Later I met a girl who lived in Vancouver, British Columbia. We hit it off really well, and when she went home we traded letters for months. I worked a summer in a music festival circuit and wrote that after the season was over I wanted to hitchhike up to Canada and see her. Her response, and I am not paraphrasing, was: "That sounds great. Go for it!" I was pretty young, in case you were wondering. The festival season came to an end, I left my non-portable belongings at my mother's house, loaded up an old external-frame backpack with stuff, and put my thumb out. And got rides. It was, by the way, mid-November by the time I set out. Not that that matters much when one is traveling north in the Northern Hemisphere or anything. 1/

Replies (1)

@me@social.taupehat.com 2026-07-21 05:51

Anyone who has hitchhiked any amount of distance will tell you that the insane stories (which we ALL have) are so deeply buried within days or weeks of being pretty much totally miserable most of the time that when the crazy part happens you barely even notice at first. You're just like "oh, this is also miserable, but in a different way." Of course, this isn't always the case - some of the crazy stuff was also epic fun - but mostly you're just cold, tired, wet, hungry, scared, or being actively threatened by someone with a badge and a gun. But I did, despite the best efforts of various people whose intentions were or were not malign, make it to Blaine, Washington. This being the northernmost town along I-5, I elected to walk along the frontage road rather than walk on the freeway. Only the "frontage road" started sprouting various businesses, and dead-ended into a big grassy park. I walked through it, still heading north, and crossed what was only the hint of a ditch at the far end before I found myself in a residential neighborhood. I headed back toward the freeway and on the way there noticed that all of the cars now had British Columbia license plates. Oops. So I walked back toward the freeway and soon came to a really tall chain-link fence, across which was the Canadian customs office where they had cars queued up for inspection. I walked along this fence looking for a way through and found none. Eventually the fence gave way to BC-99, which is what folks call I-5 once you cross the border. I briefly considered walking back against traffic to the customs office, but it was kind of a ways and the traffic was intimidating. "If they don't care I don't care," I reasoned, and continued north to the next exit and eventually found myself in Vancouver proper, where I placed a phone call to a very surprised local resident. It didn't work out with the girl. Apparently I wasn't the only person in this situation who was young, so when I said what I intended to do she took it as a joke and responded accordingly. No shade though - she was pretty cool - but there were... circumstances. So once I had run out of money I decided to return to the United States where I could get a job. And here's the half-crossing I mentioned earlier. I caught a ride south out of Surrey with someone who was actually willing to drive me through, but I demurred. I didn't want him to get mixed up in my business, nor I his. He dropped me off at the US Border Patrol station (I think that's what it was called back then - this was a good decade before 9/11 changed everything). I walked in, there was a bench. I took my backpack off and sat on the bench. There was nobody in the office. Everybody was out in the booths inspecting cars. I leaned over the desk, called out a few times, looked around. The only movement I could see was the coffee burning in the pot. After about fifteen minutes or so I figured if they don't care I don't care, hoisted my backpack over my shoulders, and started walking down the road. I probably made it about a hundred yards before I heard "Hey BUDDY!" I turned around. There were at least four officers running at me, hands on their holsters although I think this was more to keep things from bouncing around too much than anything else. Nevertheless, I raised my hands. What I did not know at the time was that according to Houston v. Hill (482 U.S. 451, 1987), the US Supreme Court has held that "the First Amendment protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers." As it happens, I did not need to know that, as the officer who did most of the talking and I got into a solid argument about the relative merits of crossing an international border without proper authorization, best effort attempts at doing so, the rights of a country to protect its borders, the responsibility incumbent upon those charged with protecting those borders to actually do their job and, at the end of the day, the fact that I was a United States citizen who had done nothing wrong. So, after some time while my ID was run and the security tapes proving I had tried to gain someone's attention had been reviewed, I was finally released into the rather cold embrace of my home country. That was the almost the third time. Technically I was a football field away from the border, but it probably doesn't count since I had to head back. This might be a good time to warn folks that there was true mortal danger involved in these trips and I was confronted with it several times that I was aware of and probably a few times I wasn't. But was it the right thing to do? I survived. Nobody was harmed. Much was learned and many sights were seen. So if someone you know is planning to go off to see about a girl, I say let 'em. Prepare them if you can, but let them go. END

Open ##3978314