ahdont.com: witness the weakness™

spend my easter weekend at mt. washington, new hampshire with Dan, Sulliven and Stephene. it was a beautiful weekend, where i can experience alpine style mountaineering, i have been longing for such holiday for so long, and here i am after 9 hours of driving, we arrived at the white mountains, mount washington, the highest mountain in the north east america standing at 1,917m with the highest wind gust on earth in history.
we took off in the evening and met at sulliven’s house to pack and organize ourselves then we started the long 6 hours drive to bangor. the drive wasn’t as bad as i thought it was, the snow was pretty bad but we were able to get more than 3 statue miles for sure. the highlight of the drive to bangor was at the US custom, we were all excited to get search by the us custom because we have tons of baggage and equipments, plus i am a tourists and that usually make things abit more erratic.
from canada to the states, we had to go through the us custom in the middle of a highway, where it connects highway 2 to interstate 95 (i think), during the merge from highway to the custom line up, we were racing against other traffic, thinking that if we get there first, peer pressure, snow storm, traffic pressure would ease up on the custom officer and let us go without searching our heavily packed backpacks. we even rehearsal on the usual questions that they will ask then we found out that we were in a perfect setup for a terrorist attempt, one pilot, a chemist engineer, a mechinical engineer and a computer programmer.
we won the traffic rac and got the first spot at the line up, the moment we sae green light, we started to move slowly and stop just before the yellow line. however, we weren’t close enough to see the officer. you know when you are in a drive through and trying to pick up your coffee and realize that you still have another 3 feet to go before you can get your coffee, we were exactly in the same position. because the snow storm was pretty bad at the moment, the officer refuse to step outside and closed the door until we moved forward. the conversation was as follow.
US custom officer: where are you guys coming from
Dan: moncton, new brunswick
us custom officer: where is your destination?
dan: mt washington, new hampshire
US custom officer: what are you guys going there for?
Dan: we are going to for the mountain climbing at mt washington
US custom officer: MOUNTAIN CLIMB? you do realize that they have just upgraded the storm to a blizzard!
Dan: no sir, we don’t.
US custom officer: there is a storm coming from OHIO (he was pointing back and forth telling me the size of the low system and where it was coming from, i was amazed how he did it, he was gesturing and telling me the system was from this side from this state to that state and should be arriving here in the next few hours. it was very professional and very informative. i was very impressed)
Dan: errr, okay. i don’t think is that bad right now. what is the temperature in maine do you know?
US custom officer: they are expecting 9 and you know its going to be alot colder up there.
Dan: oh, 9? thats pretty warm then.
US custom officer: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAARM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(he was furious, the moment when dan said warm. because we were thinking celcius and in the state they uses farenheit. the formula is 5/9*temperature-32, the easiest way to visual this is that 0 celcius = 32 farenheit, so 9 farenheit is pretty cold in celcius (around 15c)
Dan: oh oh oh, farenheit, i am sorry. holy shit thats pretty cold then.
US custom officer: yes son! i highly advice you to take the next exit and thats your last stop for food, gas and coffee until you reach Bangor!
Dan: ah, thank you thank you
US custom officer: okay here are your passport, don’t hurt yourself and have a good trip.
the US custom officer was very nice, at the beginning he was giving us the authority and military type of welcome but i think he was train to do that at the border but in the end, he was very helpful and very informative. i believed that our strategy works very nicely and distracted him from searching us, although we didn’t bring anything illegal but it will definately delayed out time to reach bangor and result in less sleep for the next day.
we arrived at bangor around 11pm and had supper at the gas station then we stay in the motel for the night and prepare for more driving for the next day.

to be continued in part II