I put BLAME this exhausting Tuesday morning on the following;

• Day off school for most kids and Gov’t workers in Canada
• Strong Canadian dollar
• Christmas Shoppers
• Rookie bargain hunters.
• Map Quest for giving everyone the same option to cross into Canada
• GPS systems that pretty-much give drivers only 1 option to cross back into Canada.

Picture this… a family of 5 stuck in a mini van for 3 hours (traveling 2 miles during this time) and this, after a full day of shopping. And this didn’t include the other hr you had to drive to finally get home.

Yep the joys of cross-boarder shopping to use the muscle of the strong Canadian dollar. Going down to NY State is a norm for us since we use our Sams Club membership quite often, but 3 hrs just to cross the freaking boarder? We finally get up to the security checkpoint area (customs) and so we don’t have to leave one of the girls as payment for duty we owe, we started a conversation with the wonderful customs officer about how hard their job must be having to deal with all these cranky shoppers. The conversation lasted quite a long time (long time if you were stuck behind us waiting to get cleared ), that’s when she explained that it seems when most shoppers plug in shopping or an address in Buffalo NY into Mapquest or one of those gps navigation systems, it gives them directions using the Queenston / Lewiston boarder crossing. Thus causing this massive amount of traffic, all trying to get back into Canada from one entry point.

Did she mind all this traffic NOPE! She mentioned that not only does it keep her busy and make her shift go faster, she remarked that it assures her that her job is safe. Someone must be here to check all these people before they enter Canada.

We had a good chuckle, she said had a good night folks and we smiled all the way to the toll since we didn`t have to pay any duty on the purchases we made this LONG day.

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Here`s my pet peeve for this week! In case you`re wondering, NO! I DIDN`T HAVE A GULP ALREADY. This seems to be the norm now when you purchase a cup of coffee from Tim Hortons on Concesion Street in Hamilton. Maybe I got the discounted rate for the coffee that`s missing from the cup.