Friday, 20 July: More time in Haines. There was coffee; there was improv theatre workshoping; there was walking in the rain and loving it; and, at midnight, there was Harry Potter.

Saturday, 21 July: From midnight until around 5am was time set aside for the Deathly Hallows, and then I got a bit of sleep before the improv workshop at 10. We improvised until 1:30-ish, after which I read some more of Potter. The improv performance was that evening, at 5:30, and we didn't stop having fun/making fools of ourselves until 9:30. Ben and I went to a bar in Haines, the Pioneer, for a concert and to meet the friend of a friend that could, maybe, give us a ride back to Haines Junction the next day. Immediately after milkshakes we met Julie and had our ride out of town and back to our bikes. She was fun, and we quickly dropped the "friend of a..." portion of the title and were actual friends. This was all taken care of so quickly that I only stayed at the show for one song, and then it was off to bed. It was a good song though. If I were a dancing man I would have been dancing then.

I think there might be a Pioneer bar in every town in Alaska.

During the afternoon we had a meeting about the trip. My tendinitis, though it was getting better, was still bad enough that I didn't think it wise to ride for a little while. Ben has a wedding to attend in Washington on the 19th of August, so though I needed more time, we also couldn't afford to simply take another week off entirely. We struck a compromise that allowed us to cover a significant distance as a group and allowed me to get a bit more rest - we took the ferry from Haines to Prince Rupert, BC. This saved us almost 1000km of riding and, since we weren't going to sail until Thursday, gave me another week to rest and, hopefully, heal. The downside, aside from not being able to ride, was that we ended up cutting out the Cassiar Highway portion of the trip. That would have been the last really remote, and most bear-dense, section of road. Maybe I can ride that portion next summer. I'd still like to see it.

Sunday, 22 July: Up at 6:00am and finished with the Deathly Hallows by 8. If you've not yet read it - don't. Unless you've read all the rest. In that case you should read it, and you'll probably enjoy it. I did. It ends predictably well, but it doesn't get to the end at all like I thought it would. I wish the epilouge weren't so sweet, and that it had more about the functioning of a post-Voldemort magical world. I'm kind of a sucker for those details.

We caught our ride out of town around 1pm and rode 40 miles to the Canadian Border. There we were denied entry into Canada. We were told that we were carrying insufficient funds. The Canadian border patrol officer who spoke with us told us that there was a law stating that we needed to carry $200 in cash for each day we planned on spending in Canada. The process of being denied entry took almost an hour, during which our friend, Julie, waited in her car while we were treated like children by the Canadian officers. If we were driving a nice car, the officer told us, he wouldn't insist we carried the money, but bicycles suggest poverty and the Canadian government shouldn't have to risk supporting foreigners. We spoke to a customs agent on the phone who told us that $50/day would be sufficient as long as we also presented an accurate, current bank statement. Assuming that it would take us 30 days to ride through Canada, we were expected to carry somewhere between $1500 and $6000 dollars in cash. That's insane.

Julie, who had to be back to her home in Whitehorse that night so she could work at 7am the next day, agreed to drive us back to Haines so we could go to an ATM. After getting $200 cash each and printing out bank statements we filled Julie's tank and were back on the road. At the border we were questioned by a different officer, one who had been in the room during the rejection process, but who had kept quiet and screened other travelers who had come to the border after us. He asked to see our money, and we showed him our $200 each. He shouted at us about not having enough for our planned two days in Canada and we corrected him and told him that the woman on the phone had told us $50 was fine. He then asked to see our bank statements. Ben and I produced ours, but Kayla's had gotten lost in the rush. He then began shouting again, this time directly at Kayla, and pounding his fist on the counter while berating her for failing to follow directions. Ben, Julie, and I looked on in shock. After a moment the officer noticed that Kayla was crying and we were looking at him in disbelief and he, I think, realized what a f-ing jerk he was being. He even looked a little embarrassed. He told us we could go through, but that when we entered Prince Rupert we had better have thousands of dollars or we'd have to buy tickets back to Juneau from there. It wasn't clear to me why we would have to go to Juneau rather than any of the half dozen closer ferry stops, but I thought it best not to raise the question then.

The conversation for the rest of the ride into Haines Junction was centered around our border incident, with each of us sharing our past experiences with overly aggressive keepers of the peace. In the Junction we bought Julie dinner and ice cream and exchanged contact info. She then left fot Whitehorse and we went back to Sally and Trevor's house for an early-to-bed night.