Excerpts from my brother's trip from Red Deer, Canada via Portland, Michigan, the Great Lakes, to New York and Boston, US. And back again to Vancouver to fly home in the first few days of March.

They have just arrived in Minneapolis. On to the excerpts:

When they first planned to road-trip:

We are sick of our jobs here. Snowboarding is awesome, but it's not worth living in this shit-hole, and doing a shit job for shit money. We might end up fruit picking with illegal Mexican immigrants in the US. Or selling our hair to wig manufacturers. Or just going to Vegas and putting it all on red.

On the road-trip:

Slept overnight in our van in place called Regina with sleeping bags, the "cuddle foam" (aka memory foam) and single fan heater. It wasn't quite the simulated tropical night we expected as the heater couldn't quite battle the -20 degrees outside ... But we woke early and thawed ourselves out on the way to the border (North Dakota). Crossing the border was an ordeal, for some reason they "randomly" decided to stop the young, long haired, male, scruffy, hippy clothed, loud music listening, drop dead sexy, grinning, tired, low funded, large old van driving travellers, and do a two hour individual interrogation and search of the van for - "Now don't be offended because we ask everyone this, but have you ever taken narcotics."

"Are you sure, because now this is your last chance, and if we find anything the van can be seized."

"Now some people have narcotics for personal use, and we can work with that ..."

Then 2 hours later we drove off in our narcoticless van.

Hee :X lol.