Nexus Pass

A Nexus pass is a must have for anyone making regular trips across the US/Canada border. If you've crossed recently you may have seen the line for Nexus card holders. Yup, it's the line with NO WAITING and easily identified while you sit counting blades of grass on the side of the road waiting for the line to move at something greater than glacial pace.

For a mere $50 you can get a pass allowing you to use this lane for 5 years. If you make 6-8 trips per year across the border this $10 per year investment can save quite bit of time. I went online in December and filled out the application. Among other things they want to know every address you've had for the past 5 years, employment history, passport number, drivers license number, and all the other information needed for a thorough background check. Then you punch in your credit card number and hurry up and wait for them to get back to you.

About 3-4 weeks later I got notification that I could now make my interview appointment. The earliest appointment was for April 16 at 11 am! A fellow paddler, Doug, had his appointment the Monday before and he sent out a message describing his experience. Sounded rather daunting, big scary people with guns asking lots of questions, took him around 1.5 hours. I brought some work along to do while I waited and my birth certificate, which wasn't on the list of things you had to bring but Doug said they asked for anyway, gave him a hard time for not having it too. I passed my documents to the not so scary guy and was told to go wait outside next to the guy who needed to learn a little dab'l do ya with regards to the cologne.

I was called in within 10 minutes to be asked a handful of questions first by the US customs agent: why do you want a Nexus pass? race outriggers monthly or so; have I ever been arrested? no; ever had a DUI? no; basically ever got caught doing anything wrong? no. I got caught up talking about outrigger with both customs agents. Then he took my photo digitally and my finger prints, also digitally. Now time for a repeat performance of all the questions with the Canadian customs agent. We went through the questions pretty quickly and then she wanted to pick my brain about outrigger. I gave her the condensed version, my contact information, and days and times of our practices. I was completely done in 25 minutes and that was including all the gabbing about outrigger and now I have my Nexus pass. Wahoo, time to go to Canada in the fast lane, except the my next race there isn't until Memorial Day weekend.