madcorgi

Three fun run-ins with bureaucrats suffused with their own self-importance:

1. Canadian border guard at Peace Arch BC asks me where I'm going in Canada. I tell her it's a vintage truck museum in Surrey BC. She asks me the address. I have it on my phone GPS, but can't get reception at the border crossing. She tells me to look for a local wifi that works. I try and try, but there are none that I can get onto. We sit for awhile while she grumbles at me for not writing the address on apiece of paper and fires off a few more questions. All while a long line of cars waits behind. She finally lets me go, but tells me to write down where I'm going on a piece of paper next time. "Yes ma'am. Have a nice day."

2. Later that same day, on the way back, the US BP guy decides he doesn't like my story--I just took a day off--a Thursday--to go to Canada? To go to a vintage truck museum? Prima facie suspicious. I tell him I have summers off. And then . . . he spots the plastic sawhorses in the back of my BMW. What the heck are those doing there? Well, I'm doing some work on my house, and they happened to be in the back. "That's it--open the trunk, Mother****er!" I comply. Hear him rooting around back there among the cases of water I've been carrying around back there for a couple days. "Water! What's all this water doing back here?" Um. I gotta admit, officer, I don't really know. I just never took it in the house after I bought it last week. He finally decides I'm not transporting terrorist water. He orders me to empty out my car next time before crossing the border. "Yes sir! Have a nice day!"

3. Building a garage behind my new place requires a permit from the burg. Regrettably, I have to remove an old cedar tree and two hemlocks to make room, and the tree guy says the city will need to approve that. I meet with a person at the planning desk. She says the tree is 80 feet from a seasonal stream, so might be considered in an environmentally sensitive area. I ask what the buffer zone is (I already know it's 50 feet). "It depends." Depends on what? No clear answer; I am left with the impression that it's at the whim of whomever is working the desk that day. They suggest a site visit. Oh boy! It happens, and whoever does it says OK to cut. May have post signs though, that says it's near an environmentally sensitive area. On my own property? Yup, she says. "Maybe." Also might have to put a notation on the land records. "Maybe." I tell her I bought the place based on earlier representations from a different planner that I could build a garage there. "Hmm. Well, nobody has a right to actually rely on what the desk people tell them. We're just advisors." OK. Have a nice day!