¿Podré a cruzar la frontera? (12 Feb)

I had my alarm set for 0430.  The plan had been to get up and get ready and then, 20 minutes before we were to leave, I’d wake my housemate and he’d get ready and we’d go.

At 0510 I knocked on my housemates door.  No response.  I knocked again… still no response.  I started to wonder if he’d even come home last night.  I called out his name and he finally responded.  Good.  I went to my room and waited for him to get up… he didn’t get up.  Ah fuck it, I thought.  I’ll give it ten minutes and if he’s still not up I’ll try again.

10 minutes later, still nothing.  I went back to the door and knocked.  Nothing.  I knocked again and he responded verbally again.  I stood by the door, I considered whether I should be more insistent or should I give him another 5 minutes.  As I was contemplating my next move I heard some movement from his room.  I returned to my room because I didn’t want to appear too overbearing.

He appeared from his room looking very weary.  It was not a comforting look.  Before I could ask how much sleep he had had, he said “Fuck, I’m still drunk”.  Fucking great.  This is exactly what I need to hear.  I could have organised someone to take me yesterday but now?  Now I had no choice.  I would be getting a ride from a drunk man across the border.  This was not looking good.

“I can’t believe I’m still drunk”, he said.  I asked him what time he got to sleep and he said 0330; 2 hours ago.  I told him that, if he went to bed drunk two hours ago, it’s not that surprising he’s still drunk now.  He told me about his night of debauchery with his old friend.  It sounded like a pretty standard night out for my housemate.  I asked him if he was going to be able to do the drive.  I don’t know why I bothered to ask – I had no real other options and my housemate had been a proud drunk driver from way back, why would he feel he couldn’t make the grade now?

I just needed 30 minutes of good luck.  That was it – don’t die in the next 30 minutes of time with my housemate and I’d be home free.  We got in the car and took off, my housemate doing his usual late breaking at stop signs (which he does sober as well) and initially he did a sudden pull of the steering wheel because he thought the car was veering out of the lane, which it was, but not that badly.  His driving smoothed out and, with some additional warning from me about cars approaching, things were working fine.

We reached the car line for the border and it was backed up for about a kilometer.  My housemate decided we’d be better off walking across the border.  This worked well for me; there aren’t any laws about walking across the border drunk.  So we found a parking spot and took off again.

There was no cue to cross the border on foot.  We got to the immigration check very quickly.  My housemate got through ahead of me and started getting questioned by a customs official.  I threw my housemate the keys to unlock the padlock on my bag, if he needed to, he still had the hand-eye coordination to catch them, so that was a reassuring sign.  The lady who was checking my passport out asked a few questions but, probably because I told her I’d be returning to Australia soon, had very few suspicious sounding questions.  She asked if I had anything to declare and I said “not really, just some Mexican clothes – gorros, a couple of ponchos”. She was fine with this and told me to have a nice day.

I walked up to my housemate who was still talking to the customs guy.  The customs guy stopped and looked at me and said “Excuse me, I’m just talking to this gentleman”.  I had approached because it was my bag, and I thought that would be what most of the conversation was about, and I had all the info.  I guess not though, so I went outside and waited in Calexico for my housemate, praying nothing would go wrong.

The customs guy waived me back in.  I approached and they opened my carefully packed and busting at the seams bag.  He was pulling stuff out and eventually got to my bottle of tequila.  He asked what it was, and I told him what should have been plainly obvious.  He asked if I’d declared it to the lady.  I told him I hadn’t and he asked why.

“Because I thought I was allowed to take one bottle of alcohol across the border”, I said.

He asked if I had any other bottles and I told him no.  He peered at the box and asked how much alcohol it had, he seemed to just be looking for problems now, like he was unhappy that nothing was going wrong.  ”It’s 750mls”, I told him and he seemed Ok with this.  He handed me my bag and told me I was free to go.  I grumbled jokingly about the difficulty I’d had packing it.  I’d need everyone to help me get my stuff back in the bag.  The customs guy had dropped one of my ties on the ground and he apologised about it when I picked it up.

We got my bag re-packed and he didn’t check my other bag – he just took my word for it.  Which is fine, because I’d told the truth… but how would he have known?  Ah well, I’m no narco.  We walked across the border and my housemate started bitching about how dumb the customs guy was.  We went and bought my ticket and then I got my housemate some breakfast at Jack in the Box.

It was a great relief to leave without getting stuck in any shit and, I can confirm, my housemate got home safely, didn’t kill anyone while driving (this time) and slept it off.

That’s it folks.  I’m done.  I’ll make a post about LA sometime soon – but the point was to cover my time in LA.  So I’m done.  I’ll see you when I’m looking at you.