Andrew was driving up to the border to renew his visa and then stop in Vermont at their #1 public golf course before returning home. Seeing how I had absolutely nothing going on, I volunteered to ride with him to make the trip seem quicker and get in another round of golf. I told him that I've never been to Canada before, so this might be a good experience for me. To that, he told me that we would only be in Canada for about five seconds as we did a u-turn back to the US border so he could new the visa. To the surprise of both of us, that five seconds turned out to be a lot longer.

He plead his case with the customs border office for upwards of two hours before they finally denied him his new visa, as well as re-entrance to the United States. With that, they escorted us (if you can call it that) back north where my real Canadian experience began. Since he drove, I began wondering how I would get back. I tried calling Christi a few times, but she didn't answer. I found out later she was outside mowing the yard. Yeah ... best wife ever. So we began to drive up north to Montreal to get everything figured out. I took the keys from him so he could call everyone he needed to and have one less thing to worry about.

Half way to Montreal, he was in a much better mood and told me to search the GPS and find a golf course since that's what we originally were planning to do that day. After a few minutes of trying to tell all of the French speaking people that we just wanted 18 holes and cart, we finally teed off on what we called a starter course as there wasn't a single par 5 and the longest hole was around 308 (either yards or meters, we couldn't tell).

After that we crossed the bridge into Montreal, found a place to eat and began looking for a hotel. After three consecutive places were booked solid, we called the Quality Inn that had one king bed left. We told them to hold it under our name and that we'd be there in less that five minutes. After arriving, the receptionist couldn't remember who we were and that we were lucky since someone came in no more than two minutes before us asking for the last king bed. He was turned down since he had dogs with him. So at nearly midnight, we finally crashed.

The next day, we went out to get some phone chargers and search for a rental car so I could get back home. Once again, we struck out at a few places that were closed on the weekend until we stumbled upon Hertz. Since nearly everyone in Montreal speaks French, it was always an adventure trying to speak English with them to let them know what we were trying to say. After a few minutes of telling the guy that I just needed a one way trip to "north of New York City" he said he finally had a car for me. Luckily enough, he actually had one that was in MPH and even had New York license plates on it.

After leaving Andrew there and navigating my way down to the border, I thought my experience was finally over ... until I pulled up and the booth I chose had the exact same guy that denied Andrew the day before. As you would expect, he remembered who I was and asked how I was able to get a car to come back home.

So after joking before the trip that it wouldn't be an official trip to Canada, I ended up driving there (I think hitting around 120 km for my high), golfing and spending the night. Hopefully my next trip up north will be more planned and less impromptu, especially given these circumstances.