40 Easy Steps For Crossing The Border

1. Allow your friends to convince you that you don’t need a passport to cross into the USA.
2. Drive to the Fort Erie – Buffalo border.
3. Present driver’s license and cross into USA (This was the easy part.)
4. Head to Anchor Bar, famous for inventing buffalo wings. Devour the wings.
5. Realize no one has a credit card, argue whether they take Canadian money, try to find an ATM, then pay in Canadian money anyways.
6. Head to a 7-11 to buy beer for a party back home. Intending not to declare it at the border, stuff it in the trunk.
7. Stop at the Tax and Duty Free store and buy a giant bottle of Disaronno. Ensure your driver has also bought a bottle of cologne.
8. Declare your purchases at the Canadian border.
9. Get asked to pull over for inspection.
10. Wait around in the car like an idiot thinking an officer will come out, before realizing that you have to go inside.
11. Allow your driver to declare the cologne, but insist he bought the beer in Canada. Declare the alcohol.
12. When you realize that you have to be out of the country for 48 hours to be eligible for tax free purchases and the 15-year old kid at CBSA wants to charge you $35 tax on a $27 bottle of alcohol, agree to return to the US side to return the bottle to the store and incur no penalty.
13. Take the return sheet provided and don’t forget a receipt to prove you returned it.

This is the important part:

14. Surrender your license to the woman at CBSA, so she knows you’ll return for it after returning the alcohol.
15. Have your car searched by a 15-year old kid and allow him to scrutinize the beer, smugly pointing out that, in Canada, they print the alcohol content on the bottles but, in USA, they don’t.
16. Allow your driver to pay tax on the cologne and beer.
17. Drive back across the Peace Bridge, allowing your driver to quip, “Why do they call it the Peace Bridge? There’s nothing peaceful about this.”
18. Approach the US border patrol and, having no ID to surrender, explain that the Canadian border patrol has your license and you’re just making a return to the Tax and Duty Free shop. Hand over the return sheet as proof.
19. Have US guard say, “Really? I’ve never heard of that,” prompting you to wonder who would make up such an intricate return-to-the-duty-free-shop story to sneak into the USA.
20. Also wonder if the US and Canadian border patrol ever actually talk to each other.
21. Surrender birth certificate to US border patrol.
22. Get asked to pull over and go inside the security office.
23. Wait inside security office adjacent mirrored doors, through which several officers pass, wondering if you’ll have to get a body cavity search.
24. Prepare to curse the officer inside if he asks for ID, since your license and birth certificate have both been confiscated and the only ID you have is your health card, which they don’t accept.
25. Get called into office and explain what happened to officer.
26. Have officer understand your story, only after surrendering your health card as ID.
27. Allow officer to racially profile your two darker-skinned friends. After one friend jokes, “Aww, that’s profiling,” with a chuckle, allow officer to say, “Well, no it’s not that, it’s just y’know,” and assume that ‘y’know’ means ‘racial profiling’.
28. Allowed to leave, present the officer at the door with your slip and have him radio to another officer outside, “Three clear. Go.”
29. Wonder if the first officer hadn’t cleared you to leave, if a sniper outside would have shot you.
30. Get back in the car and make an illegal left turn on a red light to get to the Tax and Duty Free shop. Ensure this is done directly in front of border patrol.
31. Return the bottle and get a refund.
32. Forget receipt.
33. Realize you forgot the receipt halfway back to the Canadian border.
34. Tell the woman at the border that you’re stopping at CBSA to retrieve your license.
35. Tell the 15-year old kid you returned the bottle but didn’t get a receipt.
36. Allow the 15-year old kid to once again search the car, only more thoroughly this time, to ensure you returned the alcohol and didn’t merely hide it somewhere else.
37. Wonder if the kid thinks we went back to return the bottle and it took an hour because we tried to hide the alcohol in the windshield washer reservoir.
38. Retrieve license.
39. Stop at tollbooth and scrounge for change ($3.75), while the woman in the booth stares blankly with her hand out like a homeless person.
40. Head home.

BONUS: EASY STEPS FOR RETURNING TO TORONTO TO TELL YOUR
FRIENDS ABOUT YOUR ADVENTURE AT THE BORDER

41. Arriving back in Toronto, get cut off by a white pickup truck and lay on the horn.
42. Allow driver to menacingly pace alongside you and stare. When this is not possible due to traffic or parked cars on the right, allow him to ride your bumper and high beam you.
43. Try to lose the pickup truck (Extra points if you also make it to the house you were scheduled to attend a party at and bring aforementioned beer to, but pass it trying to lose the truck.)
44. Allow this to continue for several kilometres before deciding to call 9-1-1.
45. Call 9-1-1 and have them instruct you to drive to the nearest police station.
46. Bait road rage driver into following you to the nearest police station.
47. When you pull into the police station, have him pass you and disappear.
48. Return to the house, calling several times for directions because your GPS is a piece of shit and your reliance on your GPS has rendered you incapable of following road signs.
49. Seeing lights on, knock on the door of the wrong house. Ask if Chris is there and allow drunk and high gentleman to enquire, “Who are you guys? Who’s Chris? Why are you looking for him?” Let his dog come out to sniff you.
50. After driving back down the street, realize it was actually the house next door.
51. Decide to fuck the party and go home.