I Crossed The Canadian Border In A UHaul Truck. And I Wasn’t Moving.

An international vacation suddenly falls apart and unexpectedly ends with a high-stakes border crossing.

Lumbering through the Montreal City center, my wife navigated tight 19th century streets in a vehicle better suited for a cul-de-sac or a college quad while I struggled with my task — using a compass.

The iPhone’s compass app more precisely.

While my compass adjusted itself to point north, I adjusted my navigation setup.

This consisted of a phone on airplane mode, a compass I’ve tried to delete and screenshots of a route we may or may not actually be taking.

I suppose if I really wanted a vintage navigator vibe I would have printed them out and fumbled with them, MapQuest style.

Thankfully I didn’t have to play navigator long. After a few turns my wife determined we were going in circles.

At a red light she glanced at the only reference point we had, our blinking blue dot on offline Google Maps, and charted a new, much more direct course toward one of the main highways that led to the US border.

Not only did we need to “escape” Canada, we also needed to pick up a more permanent (and less top-heavy) rental in the US.

Oh, and at this point we had 75 min until our rental vendor, sitting just on the edge of the University of…