Soul Searchings

With the CAD-USD exchange rate reaching an all-time high of 1 CAD = 1.10 USD last week, a bunch of us decided to head down south to do some shopping. Instead of going to Bellis Fair or the Seattle Premium Outlets, we decided to do it right and go all the way down to Portland for some tax-free shopping! With the additional fact that it was a long weekend, we knew that the border lineups would be crazy. In order to beat the rush, we figured getting to the border at 6am would probably be ideal. Even the early people heading to the Seattle Premium Outlets shouldn’t be at the border before 7am, since the mall opens at 10am. We planned to leave at 5:30am, but things didn’t quite work out as intended. The original plan was for Thi to drive all of us in his minivan, but while he was cleaning it out for the trip, he realized that the insurance papers were not there. The vehicle itself had current insurance, but the papers were nowhere to be found. Deciding to not risk driving without the papers, we went to plan B, and that ended up being me driving Thi and Kent, and Chanh driving Clara, Gary and Mimi. We headed out at about 6:30pm, grabbed some Timmie’s, and got to the border shortly after 7am. Even this early in the morning, we were treated to a full 90 minute lineup. It definitely could have been a lot worse, as the lineup grew to an estimated three hours by 8am. We inched along and finally got through at around 9am. We drove down towards Seattle, and decided to make a slight detour east to Redmond to have lunch at the Todai there. We arrived at about 10:30am, but the problem was it didn’t open until 11:30am, so we wasted away the hour shopping at the Macy’s and perusing at Borders. This was only the second time I’ve been to Todai, the first being a year and a half ago with Elaine at Las Vegas. The weekend lunch price is $16.95, and most of us assumed that it included soft drinks, but we were mistaken. I’m pretty sure the one in Las Vegas did include it, but alas, it ended up being a $19 meal, not including tax and tip. I definitely didn’t get my money’s worth this time, and felt unsatisfied upon leaving. I didn’t feel especially hungry to begin with, and it failed to live up to how I remembered the Las Vegas location to be. Asides from the inclusion of drinks, the Las Vegas location had endless prawn tempura, and chocolate mousse for the made-to-order crepes. The Redmond location only had mixed tempura with some prawns thrown in, and no chocolate mousse! Going by what what I ordered the last time I was at Todai, you know how much I love the chocolate mousse!

After our meal, we continued the long drive down to Portland. Kent took over the driving duties for awhile, because I didn’t think I would have been able to drive the entire five hours myself. I ended up driving again after taking a short nap in the back seat. Even though I was not supposed to drive in our original plans, I had decided to try and get ample sleep for the trip down, but it didn’t quite work out as planned. I went to sleep especially late on Thursday night, so that I would be tired on Friday night and sleep early. That part worked fine, and I was tired enough to go to sleep at 11pm. I fell asleep pretty quickly, but for some reason it was not a deep sleep. After the episode of The Simpsons that I had put on to fall asleep to finished, my brain kind of woke itself up and realized that the show was over. Of course, I tried to continue sleeping… but I wasn’t able to. It was as if I had just taken a power nap for 15 minutes. I got up and went to the computer to put another episode on, when I got a strange message on MSN from Ken, with an attachment purporting to be an picture. It didn’t take me long to realize that he had a virus, so I ended up spending the next hour or more trying to help him get rid of it. It turns out we found something even more scary on his computer, and that was a remote desktop software called eMando disguising itself as svchost. It seems like this particular trojan has a relation to poker, as I read that someone else might have gotten his poker account looted because of it. Fortunately, it looks like Ken never got hacked though. I managed to help him get rid of that, but his MSN virus remained. Anyways, I tried going back to sleep afterwards, and just couldn’t. I would lay there for a half hour, go back on the computer for a little bit, and repeat that cycle several more times. Before I knew it, the time was already 3:45am. I went back to bed one last time and finally managed to fall asleep, but only for an hour and a half before it was time to get up.

We finally arrived at the Woodburn Company Stores a little after 4pm. Initially we were concerned we wouldn’t have enough time to shop there before it closed at 8pm, but our fears were soon alleviated. I’m not sure whether it was because we got there late or not, but we were all highly disappointed with what we found there. Almost all of us left the mall empty-handed. I had anticipated picking up several items at the Nike outlet, but couldn’t find a single thing worthy of purchasing. We were done by 6:30pm and headed off to Fry’s. For those that haven’t been to Fry’s, you can think of it as having the layout, size and feel of a Costco, except it only sells electronics like FutureShop. Our morale was boosted significantly after arriving. There were many good deals to be had, and most of us made purchases there. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but ended up picking up a Canon SD750 digital camera for my dad, and a set of two Panasonic DECT 6.0 cordless phones for the house. The SD750 had a sale price of $227, and that included a 1GB SD card. The best price in Canada is $280, and the regular price in the US is $250. With no taxes, I got this camera for the equivalent of buying it here for CDN$185 - quite the deal. The cordless phones were the most unresearched significant purchase I’ve made in as long as I could remember. I knew nothing about this model, and didn’t know what the going price was, but for US$80, I figured I couldn’t go too wrong. In the end, I’m quite happy with the purchase, as the reviews look quite positive.

After Fry’s, we grabbed some cheap food at Jack in the Box. I left there feeling much more content than I did from Todai, for a fraction of the price. We headed to Safeway to pick up some liquor, but unfortunately we found out that only liquor stores carried the hard stuff, and everywhere else only carried beer or similar. We checked in at the Marriott Residence Inn after that and just chilled out and played drinking games. I brought along the 100 mini-dice that I got from DealExtreme for less than two bucks shipped. Before long, we were all out of beverages, so Chanh and I headed out to the Shell station to pick up some more. In the end, I probably consumed about three Budweisers, a glass of some 8% Hurricane malt liquor, a cooler, and a Stella Artois. As most would know, I’m not much of a drinker, so this was by far the most I had ever drank. I was definitely tipsy and had trouble focusing, but not to the point where I was passing out or getting sick, which is something I’ve never done and don’t plan on doing. We turned in around 4am.

We checked out at noon, and headed first to a really large motorcycle dealership, and then to CompUSA. Next, we headed to Washington Square, which is a regular mall in the Portland area. They may not have had outlet prices, but the selection was much better. I was all ready to buy a pair of Nike Air Max Moto+5’s from Foot Locker, but they didn’t have any in my size. The price in Canada is CDN$129, while the price there is only US$89. It would have been perfect, since I had my Foot Locker gift card with me, and it can be used at US locations. I had even worn my really old pair of Nike Air Max Moto II’s down in anticipation of throwing them away and wearing new shoes back, but it was not meant to be. In the end, I only picked up a Hollister hoodie for Elaine and some See’s candy. It was already 4:30pm by the time we were done there, and I still really wanted to go to the Nike Factory Store, but was unsure when it was open until. Fortunately, when we arrived, we found out it closes at 6pm, which gave me ample time to shop. Upon entering, I was intiailly disappointed, as it looked exactly like the Nike outlet stores, but it wasn’t before long that I found out the selection at this store was much better, and I ended up buying a bunch of items.

We went to Target afterwards to waste away some time, before going to Red Lobster. I didn’t remember going to Red Lobster before, but apparently I had gone before with the volleyball team back in high school in Edmonton. Whatever the case, they still had their Endless Shrimp promotion going on, and at $16.99, most of us went for that. They had five different shrimp options to choose from: Garlic Shrimp Scampi, Hand-Breaded Shrimp, Shrimp Linguini Alfredo, Crunchy Popcorn Shrimp, and Buffalo Shrimp. I got it with mashed potatoes and a Caesar salad. It was a very satisfying meal. We left at around 10pm, and went to 7-Eleven to grab some coffee for the long drive back. I finally filled up for the first time since Blaine. I was getting record-breaking mileage in my Yaris. Previously, I had never gotten more than 600km on a tank, the closest being around 580km. However, driving a constant 110-120km on level highways yielded close to 700km without refueling.

I started driving on the way back, and after about an hour and a half, we stopped for a washroom break, and I let Thi take over the wheel. He actually ended up driving the remaining three plus hours to Blaine, where we topped up the gas. We got back to the border at about 3:30am, and at that time, there wasn’t a single car at the crossing. We let Chanh’s car go first, and they got waved through in about 10-15 seconds. We pulled up, and this was the exchange:

I hand over our identification.
Him: How long were you gone for?
Me: 2 days (technically true, although we had technically only been away for ~42 hours instead of the 48 hours required for $400 exemptions each)
Him: What was the purpose of your trip?
Me: Shopping down in Portland.
Him: What is the value of goods coming back?
Me: About $940 CDN.
Him: Any alcohol?
Me: No.
Him: Any cigarettes?
Me: No.
Him: Take the far exit on the right.

Lovely. That was the easiest crossing ever. He never even looked at our ID.

All in all, it was a fun trip, and with the dollar suddenly falling again today back down to 1.035 USD, the timing couldn’t have been better. Hopefully my purchases on plastic are going to be posted at the weekend rates!