Stuff I Saw

Border Crossers

While I was Installing the piece at the border we were right next to where all the traffic from Canada was coming through. When it was quiet we could even hear the conversations between the inspection agents and the motorists. Usually it was just a constant flow of ordinary traffic passing through, but every once and a while you would see something that made everyone stop working and stare. Here are a few incidents that I remember.

There was a woman, older, larger, woman, who crossed the border what seemed like every day on roller blades.

There was a motor-home hauling a small car behind on a trailer, only the ball on the motor-home was too tall for the trailer, so the back end of the trailer dragged on the ground. He spent a long time at inspection and I could kind of overhear questions about it but he must have convinced them it was alright because they let him go through. As he was passing through the temporary paved road with a speed bump, there were secondary officers there which stopped him and probably questioning him again because he was making a hell of a lot of noise. Again they let him go and he sped off up the on ramp to I-5 dragging his trailer the whole way. I wonder how far he got.

We saw on multiple times US border patrol agents on the north bound I-5 stretch randomly stopping and searching cars headed to Canada. Why? Who knows.

There were often helicopters paroling the border, some would just be following the border east to west, some would hover for a while looking at something. One day there was an unmarked lear type jet that approached from the east, made very sharp tight turns right over the border station and headed back east. The strangest thing was that it was only a few hundred feel off the ground but it was nearly silent.

I would often see very strange or odd looking cars passing by. One of the strangest was one I saw on the first day. At first it looked like a Smart car, but at second look it was half the width of a smart car.

With a little searching I found that its a Tango. I wonder how many times he parks his car only to come back and find it tipped over by hooligans or a small breeze.

It reminded me of this.