slingdavid
Registered User
British Columbia
I had been planning to fly my Pacer from B.C. to Utah soon to visit an old army mate. I did at "test flight" to Bellingham a few months ago to get acquainted with the border-transit stuff. Ya, the USA has legitimate, serious security concerns. Security measures are one thing, security theatre is another. The customs/border people were perfectly polite, but clearly were obliged to regard people like me (a fiftyish nurse & teacher, fifty years of B.C. residence, 25-year old pilot's license, with a "proud parent of a soldier" sticker on my rear window) with the same scrutiny they might reasonably have applied to someone with--how to say?--a different security threat profile.
So I drove there today to check, and preclude inadvertent errors (and threatened, vast, fines) on my intended flight down in a week or so and found that the entry requirements will change yet again, to now demand computer filing and registration. OK, I wasn't going to spend millions, but I was going to buy US gas, stay at US hotels, buy US stuff and spend money in US stores to buy gifts for people. To hell with it. I'll stay in B.C. and spend the money here. Too bad for me, too bad for the US merchants I'd have--in some small measure--enriched, and most of all, too bad for yet another increment on the restrictions on personal liberty.
So I drove there today to check, and preclude inadvertent errors (and threatened, vast, fines) on my intended flight down in a week or so and found that the entry requirements will change yet again, to now demand computer filing and registration. OK, I wasn't going to spend millions, but I was going to buy US gas, stay at US hotels, buy US stuff and spend money in US stores to buy gifts for people. To hell with it. I'll stay in B.C. and spend the money here. Too bad for me, too bad for the US merchants I'd have--in some small measure--enriched, and most of all, too bad for yet another increment on the restrictions on personal liberty.