Because I go through so often to go to my gym, most of the guards at the U.S. border have come to recognize me and generally wave me through with a few perfunctory questions.

Yesterday, though, there was a new guy on duty so I got to play a rousing game of 20 questions, dig out some I.D. and even had my trunk searched. No big whoop, really. Finally we came to that last question: "Anything to declare for U.S. Customs?"

"Nope," I replied. Figuring we were done, I began to put my car back into gear and motor off to the gym. Something in his posture stopped me.

"What's in the bag, ma'am?" He gestured to the cloth tote bag riding shotgun on the seat beside me. I told him it contained my gym clothes and running log.

His eyes widened. "Running log?"

I rummaged in the bag and retrieved the green notebook where I record all the information about my 10K training program. I went to hand it to him, and he started to laugh.

"Oh, I thought you had a piece of firewood in there. I thought it was some weird Canadian thing about running with firewood."

I love it that someone standing 40 feet from the border could even for a second buy into the notion that running with a piece of firewood might be a Canadian thing.

But then, we wacky Canadians do have some pretty bizarre notions--we believe in such wild-eyed things as universal medical care and gay marriage. When you look at it that way, I suppose it's not such a big leap to imagine that we might also be a nation with a firewood fixation.

Tee hee.

Just for the record, Canadians do not run with logs. Any thinking person would know that running with a log would take insane amounts of energy. Frankly, we aren't that zippy a people.

Canada is a vast frozen tundra so we have to be careful with our energy. It's prowled by polar bears continually stalking us, so when we run, we Canadians run with sticks. Polar Bear Beating Sticks, many of them ornately carved and handed down from father to son.

Really. I mean it, eh.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 312.79 miles.
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers