I have now officially joined the ranks of unpatriotic Canadians who shop across the border.
Weeeee!
Last week, my friend Elisa suggesteed we take advantage of our transient financial superiority 0ver our American cousins and go shopping! And whyever not. So she and our pal Morgan showed up at my house just past 8am and fully jazzed on caffeine we cruised to the border.
Then we stopped. And sat. And sat. And sang the entire soundtrack of "Hair". And you know how when ya gotta go, ya gotta go? Well, this big line up isn't going anywhere, so I'll just get out, scramble over the rocks and through the bushes and .....ahhhhh, that's better....and zip and....where's the car? ...No really. Where's the car?! Run! Run!
And there we were. Washington State. Ah....smells like...onion rings, actually.
Then we saw the Giant Inflatable Red Gorrilla just as we were all singing along to Peter Gabriel's Shock the Monkey, which has nothing to do with the road trip itself but is kind of cool, no?
The shopping was tremendous. I must say that I did do some gasping and sighing. The one and only drawback was the outrageous presence of every other Canadian who had the same idea, thereby creating such hellacious crowds that the line up to get into the fitting room took nearly an hour, not to mention the line up to buy something. I actually left a shoe store that was having a blowout sale without trying anything on -yes, it is true - because of the crowds.
But we were highly successful and tired and ravenous by the end.
In our attempt to find our way back north - in the dark, mind you - we remembered the motto: Washington State - come for the shopping. Stay 'cause you're lost. And so we passed through this transdimensional vapour trail and wound up in a Twin Peaks meets Twilight Zone place - the name of which we never quite figured out.
As I said, we were hungry so we went to the first place we saw. We weren't entirely sure it was even open, or that it wasn't a mafia safe house. But once inside, the suspender-clad Angry Little Man insisted that we sit. So we did. The whole time, we felt as though he were daring us to get up and leave. We weren't brave enough. The one and only waitress had the haunted look of someone you just know is usually chained up in the basement.
I ordered the lasagna. When it arrived it smelled vaguely like...i'm not sure exactly, but I think it was somewhat reminiscent of Hell. I couldn't eat it. I had to send it back. He was not happy with me and told me that i was the only person who had ever dared send his lasagna back to "the kitchen". Be that as it may, I did.
It was like a dream where you say, "Then we went to this restaurant but it wasn't really a restaurant....and everyone was whispering but we didn't know why...and there were only four other people there and they were there because their therapists told them to go on a "date" but you could tell that she really wanted to jam a fish fork into his neck and be done with it.
It was weird.
But in all, what a fanfreakingtastic road trip. Fun all round.
