Flying from Washington state to Canada

wrote in message
...
[...]
I have always found the U.S. Customs agents to be professional, polite,
and
respectful in their demeanor. Please extend them the same courtesy.

I agree that one should be very careful when dealing with US Customs.

I disagree that they are uniformly "professional, polite, and respectful in
their demeanor". I have a wide variety of experiences with US Customs,
mostly negative:
* I had the guy who slept through his appointment with me; I had to have
FSS phone him to get him over to the airport, while we sat in the airplane
on the ground (remember, not allowed to leave the airport until Customs
shows up) for over an hour. We were in the airplane with the engine off
longer than we'd been in it with the engine on.
* I had the creepy guy who, while never really overtly crossing the line
of respectful behavior, asked a bunch of questions of me and the woman I was
with that had nothing to do with our immigration status. We left wondering
if he was going to wind up stalking us later, or worse.
* And then I had the woman who took the trouble to call me back four
days after I'd been trying to reach her to yell at me and tell me I better
not have made the flight I was trying to make, since I hadn't heard from her
first (I had been phoning her office for the two days prior to the flight to
make arrangements for my return flight, which was on a Saturday and not
during normal Customs business hours at my home airport, without being able
to reach a live person once). When I say "yell", that's what I mean...her
phone call was not a friendly one.

For that last case, I wound up clearing through Friday Harbor Customs, where
I found an overworked and VERY friendly and respectful fellow. He was
responsible for both dealing with Customs at the airport as well as down at
the marina, and in spite of him having to drive back and forth all day, he
was in a good mood when I saw him and stayed that way throughout my entire
processing.

Another memorably good experience was at West Palm Beach, coming back from
the Bahamas. I wouldn't call the officer "friendly" exactly, but he was
very professional and business-like and appeared to take his job seriously.

Customs isn't all bad, as some of my experiences have proven to me. But
they sure aren't all good either, and so far, the bad has outnumbered the
good.

By the way, I have *never* had more than one Customs agent to process my
return to the US. Maybe you've had better experiences because you've always
had two, and they always are looking over the other's shoulder.

Pete