Flagpole-ing

When we arrived at the Canadian border, Daniel explained candidly to the guard that we were spending the weekend in Vancouver so that he could get his US holiday visa stamped for another six months.
She didn’t really like that, and explained that this was because both the US and Canada frown upon “flagpole-ing”, the practice of visiting one country for a short time to regain access to the other one.
The reason she was worried, she said, was that Canada didn’t want to have to look after Daniel in the event that the US refused him re-entry.

But she let us in anyway.

And we kind of worried about it all weekend. Well, not that much: if you are forced to emigrate, Vancouver’s probably as good as it gets: family friendly, best climate in Canada, a market mostly unaffected by the global economic crisis, good food, yummy local beers, etc.

To facilitate a possible return to the US, we printed out as many things as we could to demonstrate that we were indeed going back to London at the start of April: a letter from my father, correspondence with our tenants, a letter from my company confirming that I was due back at work on April 23 and a copy of our travel insurance documents.

When we arrived back at the border on a rainy Monday morning, the officer in the window thought getting a stamp would be all right, as long as we paid $6. He sent us into the office with a pink slip of paper, telling us to park the car next to a guard.
Inside, another official told us that according to the law, a visa holder must take a “meaningful” trip out of the country in order to renew his or her six months. A weekend in Canada was not meaningful, but a trip to the UK was, he stated (helpfully?).

I could see Daniel spinning sums in his head: one round-trip plane ticket to London, room and board somewhere in the northwest Pacific for the girls and me, a brand new travel insurance policy (ours terminates if we go back to the UK).

We pointed out that Daniel had applied for a nine-month holiday visa – this had been approved at the US embassy in London - but was sent a ten-year visa that we later found out was valid in six-month increments.
After letting us sweat a teensy bit more, the official stamped Daniel’s passport and sent us on our way.

Phew.

4:1

Staying in Vancouver, we achieved a new personal best for imposing ourselves on a host.
Four of us rocked up at the swish condo in the sky of Harald, a cousin of Daniel on his father’s side. A cousin he hadn’t seen in twenty years – they live 6,000 miles apart, after all.
We outnumbered our host by a lot, four of us to one of him. We have been welcomed by whole families, and couples, but never just one person. What’s more, Harald had just said goodbye to his in-laws, who had been in town for ten days before flying back to Japan with his wife and two-year old son the day before we arrived.
Harald met us outside the building, directed us into the guest parking spot he had reserved and then took us up in the elevator to his well appointed, two-bedroom apartment on the 24th floor.
Once we were safely installed with the few bags we needed for the weekend, Harald suggested we take our valuables out of the car, just in case. Hearing that we already had brought the laptop, he mentioned that his car had been broken into – twice, the second time to steal his son’s car seat.
So Daniel went down to the parking lot with him. After about ten round-trips, the two men had brought the entire contents of our car up to the apartment. I tried as best I could to store all the items as unobtrusively as possible.
Remember, we are on a six-month road trip. Across innumerable climates and three seasons. With two kids. Who are both constantly outgrowing clothes. Who need lots of toys to stay occupied as we drive hundreds of miles at a time.
It was kind of embarrassing to have someone I’ve just met see our whole life in all of its messy detail.
Harald said he didn’t mind, he knows what it’s like to have kids.
And it was true, he didn’t mind. He was an extremely gracious host who genuinely enjoyed having his life and home overrun by a gypsy family. He showed us all of Vancouver, a city that consistently wins polls on best places to live, happiest populations, etc. And with good reason, too: it’s a clean, pretty place, surrounded by water and overlooked by mountains, enjoying a temperate climate and healthy economy, and attracting outdoors-loving, intelligent people from across Canada and many other countries as well.
Pictured here are Horseshoe Bay and the path towards Stanley Park.
Good stuff, eh?

Halloween in Vancouver

Trick-or-treat
One of Harald’s coups was arranging a Halloween Experience for Sophia (and Lulu). Sophia loves dressing-up nearly as much as her mother does, and had been excited about Halloween for at least a month. Americans get way more excited about Halloween than people of other nations, so we had to take advantage on this trip.
It turns out Canadians are pro-Halloween as well.
When Daniel enquired about Halloween activities by phone the week before we arrived, Harald said there was a place in town where shops offered trick-or-treating for kids.
So down to Yaletown we went, the afternoon of the 31st. It’s a pretty trendy neighborhood, which must have one of the highest hair salons per capita in the world.
The kids were out in droves, accompanied by their parents and even some grandparents. The best costume we saw was a young Michael Jackson, complete with jheri-curl, single white glove and boom-box.
Sophia went as a friendly witch (costume hasily bought from a supermarket in Washington state the day before, I’m ashamed to say. Lulu was a very unscary dragon, in an outfit given to us by Daniel’s sister Emma a few years ago.
Daniel and I, pathetically, went only as enthusiastic parents. Harald, amazingly again, was just as into it – even though his own son was away – and took Sophia into several of the participating stores.
It was a huge success. Sophia collected unimaginable amounts of candy, and best of all, she was allowed to eat it. Well, some of it.

Comedown

Having finally reached California after seven or so weeks traversing Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, deserts, and canyons, we had a bit of a comedown. We had managed to catch friends and family in Chico and Nevada City before they left town and enjoyed happy catch-ups.
But now what?
Unsure of where to go or how we would spend the months stretching ahead of us, we started yearning after our Real House and wondering what exactly we were doing thousands upon thousands of miles from our bases in London and New York.
So we spent four nights at the Nevada County Fairgrounds RV Park in Grass Valley, California. We hung out with Daniel’s aunt Patricia – a well known immunologist who helped develop a glutathione based food supplement called Immunocal – and her husband Peter. We visited the duck pond. We enjoyed the fall colors, and the warm weather. We ate pancakes. We drank California wine.
We weighed our options: we could go early to Sonoma wine country, where we’d be spending a couple days with my childhood friend Dave McRobie in a week’s time; we could head down to San Francisco. Or we could go to Vancouver, Canada, to get Daniel’s visa renewed for another six months.
We decided on Canada. Daniel’s cousin Harald lives there. And it’s sort of close – just a quarter of California and two states away.