Delivered two loads of plastic pellets here at a 3M warehouse today. There was a driver who couldn't get into Canada because the name on his passport didn't match closely enough with the name on his driver's license, so Marten had me deliver his load too.

Anyone familiar with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy will recognize the similarity between the name of this Manitoba town I delivered in, Morden, to the dark and forbidding land of Mordor. Unfortunately for me, my journeys to Morden yesterday resembled the hobbits' journey to Mordor in more ways than one! Unlike pretty much all the other border crossings I've ever been to, this one appears to be tougher to get into Canada than back into the U.S. Both times I crossed into Canada, guards went up into the truck and went through my stuff. The second time, a couple of them got up in there at the same time, their boots muddy from the snow and sand outside. They left mud (dirty water mostly, and a little sand) all over the floor and muddied up a nice clean carpet remnant I recently put in the back of the cab. They apparently went through the whole stack of about 200 leftover photos from the batch I printed out for my classmate Brigitte's photo album. Perhaps by accident, or perhaps not, they tore the envelope it was in and didn't bother putting the photos back when they were done. Guess they were looking for whatever they could possibly find to arrest me - any kind of pornography probably would have done the trick. They also rifled through my bedsheets, pillow and duvet. Needless to say, I immediately put all of it in my dirty laundry and changed the sheets and pillowcase (left the duvet uncovered since I only have one cover for it).

It wouldn't have made any difference if I owned this truck instead of just drive it. Things like "unreasonable search and seizure" are easily taken for granted, subjects you learn in school. Got a little refresher course here today, in our perhaps overrated "neighbor" to the north.