We were entering the US through the Queenston/Lewiston Bridge on Monday morning, and it was getting busy. We had a long wait, about 35 minutes, and we were finally pulling up to the gate. The guard, normally sullen, or somewhat smiley, but not on a busy day, was exuberant!
“One of you must have just come from the doctors”, he shouted with glee. “No”, I said, and he was sure one of us had been in the hospital. This was a strange line of questioning, for sure, and then he came in my side window with a “tricorder” (Startreck reference) and put it on my chest. Then he proceeded to try each of us in turn, and we all seemed to be negative, or something.
Then he gleefully asked me to pull the car over to where a woman guard was waiting, and leave her the car and step inside and we’d get our passports back in a bit, and not to worry for surely nothing was wrong.
We arrived inside of a Stephen King movie set, or it looked like one, with lots of strange people sitting around and standing around, and signs said to wait for our name to be called. Most of them were inside for other reasons, we think.
In a bit, (about 5 minutes), our names were called. And we had our passports returned and that was that. However, I did ask what this was all about.
It seems that one vehicle on the bridge seemed to contain radioactive material. Our car was registering radioactive, and sometimes people who have had implants or certain tests in hospitals can set off their equipment. They thought we were probably not the ”bad guys”, but the car had to be checked before we could go forward. Radioactivity spreads through vehicles and can cling to another car I guess.
I checked before we went to bed last night to see if any of us were glowing, but we were safe. We were definitely shook up by the experience.
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