Passing inspection

Over MLK Weekend, I flew out to Reno to meet some friends from Iowa for some skiing, some carousing, and some general catching up in the Lake Tahoe area. On the way up the mountain from Reno, we hit the agricultural inspection station just across the California border, the one I went through on my move out.

“There’s an inspector who works here who’s from Iowa,” I said, causing everyone in the car to give me the general How Does She Know THIS Little Detail? expression of quizzicality.

I know this because of the following conversation from May, which happened after I rolled down my window  enough to talk to the officer in my lane.

“All the way from Iowa?” he said, after taking a pointed look at my license plate.

“Yeah, but I swear I left all agricultural products back there,” I said.

“Really?” He peered in the car, which was filled to the brim with everything I’d deemed critical to surviving my first couple weeks in Oakland. “Not even a house plant? A pet?”

“I have this ceramic cat,” I said. “And some wasabi peas.”

“Wasabi peas? I think those are OK.”

He took another look at the car. “So where are you moving to?”

“Oakland.”

“From Iowa?”

“I’m not really from Iowa. I was just stopping through there, it seems, on my way across the country.”

“Ah,” he said. “Because I was going to ask you if you knew a place called Council Bluffs. That’s where I’m from.”

In fact, I’d just driven past Council Bluffs on my way West, and I told him so.

“Well, good luck in Oakland,” he said. “And welcome to California.”