Damn you, COVID

We’re not going to Canada on this trip. We finally got some clarification on why Audrey got a negative result while mine was still “pending” after two days – at 2pm today, about 16 hours before the 72 hour cutoff for getting across the border, I saw an update on my test result page indicating that a specimen had been mislabeled. Several phone calls later we discovered that apparently my test tube had both my name on it AND Audrey’s name, so the lab wouldn’t release results. More phone calls ensued, assurances were made, but at 5pm we still didn’t have a result, and the customer support lady at the lab didn’t inspire confidence that one would be available anytime soon on a weekend. Rather than continuing to be frustrated at the border we decided to continue the trip in America, and while we’ll have to forfeit four pre-paid hotel nights in Canada, there are plenty of neat destinations in Upstate New York to help salvage an unfortunate mix-up. Still… we had some great plans for those four days.

When we weren’t on the phone with CVS, Minute Clinic, or Quest Labs, we enjoyed a boat tour through the Thousand Islands. My parents say I’ve been here before, but I have no memory of it. It turns out that there are actually 1,864 islands where Lake Ontario empties into the St. Lawrence River, and an assortment of 19th century millionaires bought many of them and built amazing summer homes. Occupations that might not make you rich today were sufficient a century ago to support building castles on islands, so we saw the mansions owned by the inventors of the Lifesaver candy and the Red Rider B-B gun, as well as the palatial castle built by the man most famous for the slogan “the customer is always right”; I suppose coming up with a good slogan back in the day was kind of like purchasing a great web site domain circa 2000.