For those of you who know me or read my blog, you know by now that for some reason I have pretty bad luck with travel. I'm reasonably lucky with everything else, just not travel. This is a problem, because lately I've been traveling a lot.

We just wrapped up Camp Seaside in Cincinatti and we've arrived back in Ottawa. Due to the length of my intended stay - customs decided that this time, I needed to see Immigration (why I didn't need to see them when I first entered the country.. I'm not sure. I didn't press the issue).

So after a lengthy chat with Immigration about.. well.. why Ottawa.. they sent me off to the people with the rubber gloves. Interestingly enough, they were basically interested in knowing why Ottawa, how long, whether I would really leave or not, whether I had a love interest here and if I had some sort of social support network.

The immigration people gave me what's called a Visitor Record. Finally, something they could staple in to my passport (The Americans love stapling little green forms in to your passport). This is quite a large document, so it's folded many times. Luckily it can come out when I leave.

The visitor record is a more formal and binding definition of my stay in Canada. On the way back to my sublet - I realized why this was necessary. I had already visited Canada in April to attend Smalltalk Solutions. So there was a chance that for whatever reason, I had actually been in Canada since April - which is far too long for the visa waiver.

So after determining that I wasn't working here or discovering women who own huge tracts of land, they sent me down the special hallway to the left. There I met a lovely lady wearing blue gloves (two by two, hands of blue) who's job it is to go through other peoples stuff.

Most customs agents seem to be well versed in leading question interrogation. The good thing about this kind of interrogation is that to pass it, all you need to do is tell the truth and have nothing to hide. Luckily, I possessed both of the prerequisites - truth telling skills (chicks dig guys with skills) and nothing to hide.

Even so, she decided that she'd better check my computer for.. illegal things. After instructing her on how to use spotlight, she searched for 'picture' and immediately found a picture that I had long forgotten. Bryce Kampjes in Canberra presenting Exupery at the Australian National University. The second picture was of my house mate David Price who I used to work with.

After rifling through my stuff, she came to the conclusion that I must be telling the truth otherwise I probably would have slipped up by now and sent me on my merry way. I believe my references to "Getting away from the cold and back to sunny Australia before Christmas" may have helped.

No anal searching was required. So I can now say I've had the 'treatment' from Canadian Customs. I suppose eventually all the flights were going to work and something else bad would have to happen right? Or, I guess, calling it bad isn't really right - we arrived late at night, not many people around, foreign Australian asking to stay for another 86 days.. perfect candidate to keep the rest of the customs officers awake.

Thus ends another interesting page in my travel stories. There is one other interesting condition on the travel record that wasn't on my visa waiver - I am not granted re-entry with it. That means if I went to the USA again and back to Canada, I wouldn't be allowed in. That's interesting - I didn't know it worked that way. But, my major travel plans from here is to OOPSLA in Montreal - probably by train. My next flights will actually be back to Australia in December. I have nothing to worry about except some freak snowstorm forcing me to stay in the country beyond my allowed time. I'm sure they'll be forgiving in those circumstances.