There is a significant majority of people in Canada who not only vocally decided to not go to US but discourage their friends from doing so too. People have judged me for driving through the states.
Like you will go to an election, and your choices will be
Republican candidate: "I support deporting your family, I will not only not support cleaner energy but will actively work to increase coal usage, and I think your trans cousin should be forced to transition back even if it makes them commit suicide."
Democratic candidate: "I think all of that stuff the Republican candidate said is crazy and wrong. If elected, I will strive to make all your guns illegal, so that eventually Republican-supporting institutions like the police and military, and Republican states, are the only ones with guns."
“I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida … to go to court would have taken a long time,” Trump said at a meeting with lawmakers on school safety and gun violence.
“Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Trump said.
Not sure what that has to do with what I said though.
But again, that doesn't really have much to do with what I said?
However minimal Republican support of gun rights may be, they don't have increasing gun control as a major part of their platform like the Democrats do.
The opposite is true of Republicans: their party platform is literally "whatever Trump wants", and Trump has actually articulated circumventing the second amendment entirely by "taking guns first".
Moreover, his current administration's stance is that lawfully carrying citizens protected by the 2nd amendment who are obeying the law are at risk for summary execution if his agents feel threatened enough. This makes the 2nd amendment inoperable (no need for a second amendment at all if they can just say they were scared and kill you for having a gun).
If you're going to characterize Democrats as (a lesser) evil, at least be honest about why.
Yes they will allow me to have a deer rifle with a 5-10rd capacity.
So you were not talking about your guns, you were talking about all guns. You can amend your position if that's really what it is, but that's not what you said.
The relevant point is that the line for gun ownership pushed by the Democrats (at least where I am) is way far away from the line for gun ownership pushed by Republicans.
And when stating that line, it strikes me as an odd position to take when I'm also simultaneously being told that Republicans are going to go even farther hard right / authoritarian/ take-over / w/e, while also keeping the fairly pro-Republican police armed to the teeth (again, with modern rifles).
Trump supporting red flag laws or not seems kinda like a distraction. Trump supporters saying they can shoot protestors is exactly what I'm pointing out - if that is what we're scared the future will hold, why push for giving up modern rifles?
If the election was held tomorrow it’s likely many people that voted for Trump wouldn’t go, and many people who didn’t care enough to show up would.
If Republicans turn 2 places they win by 130:100 plus a big city they lose by 100:130 into three they expect to win by 120:110 then if on the day Democrats turn out as usual but about 10% of the Republicans stay home across the board they lose all three 108:110.
My concern in the 2026 cycle is that there just won't be fair elections, and so this doesn't end up mattering.
Doubtful. The faithful will always be idiots. But around them are vast seas of folks who change their minds and even switch parties. Between foreign policy, vaccines (weirdly, not being nutter enough) and Noem turning ICE into a pageant show, a lot of Trump voters feel betrayed. It’s why the House flipping is almost a given.
"I'd rather be dead than friends with a liberal", and such tropes.
If you had 1000 coins and put them into two piles one of 440 and one of 560 it would be "about half"
But if your argument is that only 154 million people support this government and that's fine because if it was 174 million there'd be a problem, then sure.
Compare with Kier Starmer, who as of this writing has not sent armed goons into his own cities, wrecked all of his international trade and tourism, alienated his allies, or once again invaded the Middle East. His approval rating is about 20%!
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/trump-calls-uks-chagos-...
And a few months ago America was endorsing the plan
Worth nothing that this was a Tory inititive -- Truss and Sunak did pretty much all the work, it was their idea.
The president would do basically nothing for four years, which would cause some things to move slowly. But it would be a very stable environment. No random tariffs via executive order, no random wars or invasions, no governing via tweet.
Ham sandwich would maybe be one of our better presidents. Top 50%, probably.
To the degree some non-voters say they don’t care, that’s still deeply complicated, enough that even taking someone’s word for it is a bad idea. Non-voters in the U.S. are not uniformly distributed, and thus there is evidence suggesting that not caring is already a function of class, race, education, gender, and age, among other things.
If you actually care about voting and about the truth, it does yourself a disservice to jump to a assumed conclusion that all non-voters are saying something unambiguous, that they’re all saying the same thing, that they all have informed choice, that they understand all the tradeoffs and implications, and that they really are fine with any outcome regardless of what they say.
This wasn’t a bad candidate vs worse candidate situation, it was someone who supports breaking apart the trust and foundation of the country solely for personal gain versus someone who at least believed in providing a veneer of civility.
big states that always vote one way like CA where a non vote is the same as a blue vote
states where voting is such a tedious process that opting out is a reasonable choice, even if it doesnt place a big burden otherwise
states with voter id laws, often large chunks of the eligible population do not have an id
disabled people, people with hardship, etc., felons
It’s really weird logic to lump massive chunks of the general population these things apply to in with the same people that explicitly support this. It also ignores the fact that these elections often come down to a few thousand or fewer votes in a handful of battleground states. Not voting in those places, I would tend to agree more with the gist of your point, but it is no where near a big chunk of the population.
The only thing you know about them is that they did not vote. Even using your assumption of their beliefs ("both sides are the same"), that position is generally affiliated with disapproval, not approval.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fr...
"But the party just ran a bad candidate!"
"Egg prices were too high!!"
"Kamala would've been just as bad for Gaza as Trump!"
No, sorry, voters don't get a pass because they're apathetic or love being the "enlightened centrist" that lets fascism takeover.
In other news, a mouse and an elephant are both mammals.
If only there was some obvious way to tell the difference between them.
My swing-state vote was stupendously easy to get. (a) don't commit a genocide (b) give voters something big and material like free healthcare (c) don't cover up COVID and Long COVID
They didn't even try.
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/22/dnc-2024-autopsy-harris-gaz...
So they voted for the side committing genocide and who sees free healthcare as an atrocity in itself to everything the US stands for? What did the Dems do to "cover up" COVID? You know versus "It's nothing worse than the flu, it'll be over in two weeks" while privately being aware that neither of those things were true?
I mean, they didn't do that (and I think the DNC, DWS and their ilk have a lot to answer for the current state of affairs), but your "swing state, stupendously easy to get" decided instead to vote for the side that openly doubled down on those things, not really a ringing endorsement for expectations of voters there.
That's before we even get to the general issue of an electoral populace so ignorant of the political landscape that the number one search on Election Day on Google was "Did Biden drop out?"
Look around you, COVID is still everywhere and the scientific literature is pretty dismal. The Democrats lagged about 6 months behind the republicans, now most people believe what was far-right in 2020. It's true fewer people are dying, but most people do just think it's a cold. The democrats shut down reporting, didn't fight for worker protections, and basically were most invested in the economy over health. They also were never clear about the airborne method of transmission and so people ended up believing masks didn't work because they would wear a surgical mask and still got sick. They didn't "follow the science".
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/VC/VC00/20220302/114453/HHRG...
Sorry. I don't intend to downplay genocide and I don't want to come across that way.
What I'm trying to critique is (so far as I can read it from your post) your inability to see that two things can be the same in one respect - but apparently not notice that one is much bigger than the other.
If it helps, I'm not American and don't have any option to 'win' as far as US politics goes. I think you are right that Kamala Harris was facilitating genocide. But I also think you are wrong to not take into account that Donald Trump is a whole order of magnitude worse.
The administration could not do any of this without the support of Congress, which has not wavered. That support is unwavering because those elected officials are not getting negative feedback from their voters and donors, so they have every expectation that staying this course will work out just great for them.
This administration's actions only continue with the approval of their party who put them and keep them in power.
Half of America loves what's happening and the other half doesn't believe the first half loves it.
Short of voting, protesting and getting into arguments with MAGA people I don't know what else I can effectively do.
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/recall-of-state...
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/recall-of-state...
Beyond that, my state is not the problem.
>effectively
these are mutually exclusive
That it was my/our fault such views propagate because we're not "willing to understand their perspectives".
The thing is, their perspectives are a lie. And in many cases, they know they're a lie, they just don't. fucking. care.
So they can go online and whine about being dismissed or criticized, or pat each other on the back for "knowing the truth". There's a subset who, I'm sure, see such things as actual literal truth, and that's a different issue altogether, but not sure it's my responsibility to solve, or that failure to engage on my part makes the current situation "my fault".
> It's not really a choice but a demonstration of intelligence and empathy. Still, if you deliberately decide to remain ignorant, or simply fail to understand the opposition's position even despite your best efforts, it shouldn't surprise you when you also fail to convince people your position is the correct one.
Like huh? It is okay for them to be objectively dishonest, and have zero shred of empathy, curiosity for my position, but refusing to engage on a good faith basis is a failing of mine?
> Once you reach this stage, your commentary pretty much just becomes elaborate whining, which makes a poor impression of yourself and actually pushes people away from your position.
This is literally Idiocracy in the making.
If I make a poor impression on people by repeatedly shutting down their horseshit about doctors performing "abortions" up to a week or a month after birth, or that babies are being harvested in the basement of a pizza parlor for their adrenachrome, and you're more concerned about how I should be "understanding" of that perspective, again, you're also supporting the idiocracy.
The Canadian people I met as we travelled were all amazing. I was humbled that they took time to talk. And were less interested in identity than issues. One older gentleman, who saw us pull into the McDonalds with Washington plates approached us in the foyer and wanted to tell me that despite what others might say, I was welcome there. It was on one hand kinda weird and at the same time really touching.
There might be a bit more hockey ribbing for the next few weeks, but I know there's a ton of respect for Canada's team.
At the end of the day, the idea of "My problem is with the government, and not the people" is as old as time.
In my 20+ years of regularly travelling to the States, I've almost always had great interactions with the people I've met in all parts of the US I've visited, and I've been all over. "Warm and welcoming" is a very good description.
I hope to be able to visit again in the future.
But I'm a pretty optimistic person anyway.
If not, please send help or accept our political refugees because we will have become permanently screwed if this behavior continues past our current orange phase.
I beg to differ, seeing that the US had free and fair elections - media bias aside.
With its proximity to Canada, and relative cheapness, likely pulls in quite a few tourists from up North.
One additional South Dakota attraction (although lessening interest as of late) is how much hunting/fishing is available, and how much the community is interested in the ‘visiting’ hunter.
https://sdvisit.com/sites/default/files/2026-01/2025-Economi...
But when it comes to elections, first, somehow “we” get 2 bad choices every time. This last time, I personally feel they were 2 incredibly terrible choices. Then the fumbling from the other side basically assured orange man’s victory. It was a disaster of an election (but sadly appropriate as it seems like every thing we do is a disaster now.)
We also have a low voter turnout. So the result isn’t really complete and probably has some bias.
We also have an electoral college which means the winner can have less than 50% of the popular vote and win.
I could probably go on but I feel the point has been made that election outcomes are not the proxy you think
https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker
> I could probably go on but I feel the point has been made that election outcomes are not the proxy you think
The purpose of a system is what it does. There are not many grassroots efforts to change the many negatives you listed. Tacit approval - whether through nor voting or not fixing what is broken - does not lessen culpability. The outcome is still accurate representation on the aggregate.
If 4 housemates always have a dirty kitchen, it's a reflection on all of them. It may fall short of their ideals, or they can blame Bob for not doing dishes, not fixing a problem whose root they know is an indictment, not an excuse.
It's not hard to imagine people like these extending their good will to foreigners, even "hostile" ones.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/03/05/in-25-countr...
In contrast, "The United States is the only place we surveyed where more adults (ages 18 and older) describe the morality and ethics of others living in the country as bad (53%) than as good (47%)."
If you've never experienced a real winter or done neat things like winter sports then visiting Canada in the winter is a great travel experience.
1. A lot of people can't afford vacations right now
2. For people in the US, socially and culturally, there's not much of a "drive" or desire to visit Canada. I've worked for Canadian companies, etc. I've never once in my entire life heard somebody talk about visiting Canada. It's always someplace warm and tropical or it's Europe or Asia.
If you mean North East US, that whole area is a different thing. You guys (US NE + Eastern Canada) are practically neighbors compared to Miami, Houston, or Los Angeles folks :) Also probably more used to the cold!
If you go south you get sun and beaches. The coastal regions of Canada will be comparable to the coastal regions of New England and the Pacific Northwest, so there's no need to go all the way there if that's the sort of beach you're looking for.
Likewise your outdoors, your cities and restaurants and museums are all going to be about the same as the options available in the US, just further away. It's not really "exotic".
We don't really have the same emigrant relationship with Canada; my grandfather's family spent a couple generations in Canada, but my mother only found out about it after he died. He considered his family to be Irish and to have come from Ireland; that they came to the US via a couple of generations spent in New Brunswick was never a part of the family lore.
So there's no real "visiting the home of my ancestors" sort of feeling you'd otherwise see.
But, I think there some unique things worth seeing for an American: The old parts of Montreal/Quebec city, and the Alberta Rockies, especially the corridor between Banff and Jasper.
Like, if you want to see a rain forest or a thousand year old Buddhist temple or a pyramid, there's not really a substitute in the continental US.
But if you've two options, where you can go to the pretty good option domestically or drive past it and continue on to the much better option in another country ... most people will be happy with the closer option, even if there's some small number of people who want the best or have seen all the closer options before and want something different or just whimsically like the idea of going to the further-away one none of their friends have been to.
Minor nitpick, but there are temperate rain forests in the continental United States. What we don’t have are tropical rain forests.
I don't know about "exotic", but for anyone living in the northeast of the US, the easiest way to visit Europe (sort of) is to drive up to Montreal/Quebec.
Having been to Europe, no comparison.
Nothing prepares you for walking along a city street then “oh fuck, a castle…” and learning that it is now, the city’s government building. Cool… (Stuttgart, you’re awesome)
Not surprised they want to keep safely within their "East-USA" territory and go nowhere. No one wants to be disappeared in Ecuador.
Living on the west coast, Vancouver's the easiest to get to -- I love Vancouver (and Victoria), and I've been both places several times, and I've gone to Whistler a handful of times as well, but, again, it's a lot like where I grew up in Seattle.
I really do want to visit Montreal sometime, but I also want to visit Chicago and Memphis and a lot of other "domestic" locations that I somehow never find the time for.
Also, when you grow up in a country you have a lot of local knowledge from culture, friends, television, education, so we just know a lot more about domestic places we haven't (yet) visited. Plus, a substantial number of people don't have passports. We used to be able to visit Canada easily without one, now we cannot.
* Montreal - it's a big-ish city, without piss in the subways. Also the restaurant scene is good, and the old town is worth seeing.
* Quebec City - again, the old town is worth seeing. There's not much else in the US/Canada like it.
* Alberta Rockies - The corridor between Banff and Jasper is beautiful. Also, Waterton is decent. It's right across the border from Glacier NP in Montana, but less crowded. And for skiers, the Alberta Rockies also probably had the best snow in North America this past year.
As a film lover, I've been to the Toronto film festival many times, it's an unmatched experience--so many things to see, and watch films with a very engaged festival crowd just makes them better. (In the same way, even if you don't love Star Wars, going on opening weekend, with the most enthusiastic fans, makes the experience better.) And given that nearly half of Toronto's population was born outside of Canada, it makes even New York feel a little parochial.
Especially in Vancouver, most people should be pretty aware that anyone with Washington/Oregon plates (which I'm guessing is what you have) probably hates Trump more than they do.
I've never understood why somebody behind me on the road would care at all about what my political views were anyway. I guess I get it during an election, maybe (in a grammar school "inventor contest" which happened to be during the 1980 US presidential election, I invented a bumper sticker sleeve that attaches to your car, so you could swap out political bumper stickers after your candidate lost. I didn't win the contest.) But in the end I don't really understand putting any sort of social signaling of any kind on my cars, though it seems hard to avoid even by just the kind of car you drive.
Closer to topic, I've always thoroughly enjoyed my trips to Canada, and can't imagine why people think "it's just like the US, so why bother" as seems to have been expressed ny some in this thread. I somewhat recently drove up to Roberval, Quebec from my home in New England, and it was absolutely nothing like the US. I find the rural Quebecois very odd, refreshingly direct, and enjoyable to hang out with.
Perhaps in the white vs black experience lens that most of my US friends seem to see every world conflict through to relate to their own history (wild conversations about Middle Eastern politics there being racial), it's like wearing something racially inflammatory to the wrong neighbourhood. If one's blowing $$,$$$ on bespoke fly in tourism you can probably get away with it with a polite topic change as tourism keeps food on the table, but park a Trump sticker on a residential street I'd be surprised if even in the nicest neighbourhood there isn't some damage to it. Likely from a teenager goofing off with friends in the current environment.
To the second individually most Americans are nice in my experience, if you are seen as a person and not anonymous in the crowd. I've had a family member get a rifle leveled at them for stepping over a property line in the US where clearly they weren't seen as a fellow human... what can I say to that or the normalization of it.
Also:
Give money to organizations that are doing the work on your behalf. Lawsuits are still important.
Call or write your reps *frequently*. They use software to automatically tabulate voter positions. (And they look at it--they want to keep their jobs!)
If the system decides to screw you over, that your average Cali resident disapproves doesn't stop you being in a holding cell for weeks.
I try not to let them influence my behavior too much, but at the end of the day, getting thrown in immigration jail on false accusations (yes happened to me despite presenting US passport) or detained for 12+ hours (also happened several times) puts constraints on vacation plans.
We just had to wait 3 hours in line to get into Costa Rica.
The conditions of TSA and the immigration system are...not independent of politics (or even independent of the top tier of most divisive partisan political issues in the current American context.)
So there's not much mystery to it.
Probably not our friends anymore.
There are many reasons people might have, none are good. There is for instance also a risk factor of being harassed and detained by ICE. Cruelty and incompetence are a feature of authoritarian governance, not a coincidence. So anyone going there takes a kind of risk. As has been shown, even Europeans aren't safe from the whimsical paramilitary.
EDIT: I don't think that tourism is a big factor, but as I said elsewhere, it could well be the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Now instead they pay for the plane tickets to bring my nephew up to Canada.
December 2025, statscan calculated that cross-border auto traffic was down 30% (mostly same-day trips).
Air travel is only down 11%, and air travel to other countries is up 13%.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11679293/us-canada-travel-rates-d...
They didn't break down how much of that was tourism vs work.
(Asking for a friend.)
I work with a a decent number of Americans who either moved here or are here temporarily, and I can't say there has been any tension. I think most Canadians who are staunchly anti-US are also aware that plenty of Americans aren't happy with their government. I can't say I've seen any vitriol towards the average American person.
You don't need the bumper sticker, or to apologize. As long as you aren't wearing MAGA gear or being bombastic about Trump, people won't really think much of it. I assume anyone visiting Canada isn't a Trump supporter anyways, as most polling shows they've decided they don't like Canada.
I live in Switzerland, and literally everybody I talk to in our circles - bankers, doctors etc. despises US right now. The idea of going there as a tourist is immediately laughed at or met with puzzled look. Professional reasons or conferences are not even brought up, its automatic no and employers usually don't even try suggesting those.
We ourselves with kids wanted to do the trip either this or next summer, but hell will freeze sooner. Some meager +-10k from us, I know just a drop in the ocean but there could have been many such drops. Other, less hostile economies deserve these way more.
If you spend money in Canada, then you are taking stuff from Canadians. If you spend your money in the US, then you are taking stuff from Americans.
You might wonder what happens at the limit - why don't Canadians just spend all their money in the US and take all America's stuff (just a thought experiment)? Because currencies adjust. Canadians would need US Dollars to buy stuff in the US, and as more and more Canadians try to do that, the exchange rate would change to devalue the Canadian Dollar against the US Dollar, effectively making things more and more expensive for Canadians until they are forced to get their stuff elsewhere.
When you spend Canadian dollars at a business owned by a Canadian, you're sending that owner and the Canadian government your money, in exchange for their goods or services, normally at a surplus of value for them. You are 'helping' them; you are 'investing' in the Canadian economy. You are justifying the existence of their business and the jobs of the people who work there.
Especially insofar as you're making this choice versus American options, you are putting money into the hands of Canadians rather than Americans. This is the underlying concept behind boycotts and voting with your dollars or feet.
Well, I guess, they might have been auctioned off to some billionaire at that point so… the tickets will probably be pricier but the facilities should be shiny and new.
That said, I do think some people are doing things for the wrong reasons and there is some manipulation of the masses at play here. One example is I expect most people don't really understand the tariff situation between Canada and the US and that most goods are still exempt from taxes and the agreements hold. I think some people want to punish the US for tariffs that don't exist.
As a Canadian we should push back strongly against attacks on our sovereignty. We should also be somewhat concerned about the direction our neighbor is going in general. But it's also a reality that the US is very very close to us both geographically, culturally, and economically. That's not going to change. It's not an "enemy country" despite their very questionable choice of leaders. I think the correct long term direction is open borders and open trade, somewhat like the EU, and we shouldn't lose sight of that because a bad leader is in place today.
It's very weird to me to see all the focus on US policies in the Canadian discourse while not enough focus on Canada. That feels like political distraction.
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the Gestapo. What a lovely time to be a foreigner travelling in the US...
Gestapo is ... bullshit and FUD.
Yes, we see the news about ICE.
https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/border-crossing-data-annual-rel...
In 2025 there were about 18M personal vehicles and about 300K pedestrians crossed from Canada into the US. So yes, it's down (like 10%) but it's still a lot of people. Out of those the number of people that run into problems with the "Gestapo" is approximately, within rounding error, zero. You're a lot more likely to die in a car crash or get robbed or something.
Why does everything today have to be about hyperbole? You don't want to visit the US (like me) ... well don't. You don't like Trump ... fine. You disagree with the immigration policies, enforcement whatnot... fine. But enough with this bullshit fear mongering.
But to judge?
Okay
edit: The truth hurts apparently.
Edit, didn't realise it was this bad:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260223/dq260...
It's probably not bottomed out yet, some of those trips were booked months in advance and not cancellable without taking a financial hit.
We don’t care because we are the only people who live there mostly year round and only leave during spring break and the summer when domestic tourism is high.
Meanwhile it's perfectly acceptable, if not a point of pride, for Canadians to go to Cuba, which is not only run by an actual, kleptocratic dictatorship that imprisons dissidents for decades at a time, but is also the number #1 destination in the Americas for sex tourists, including child sex tourists, with the industry even tacitly sanctioned by the dictatorship ("jineterismo").
Neither has the US. Trump specifically disavowed that every time he was asked (by the CBC). Meanwhile Cuba sent thousands of mercenaries to kill Ukrainians on behalf of Russia.
> punish Canada economically
Frankly, even as someone who opposes tariffs as uneconomic, given Ottawa's long-standing "constructive engagement" with the regime in Havana, even after they hosted Soviet nuclear weapons pointed at the US, even while they put AIDS patients in concentration camps, and even while they ran the island as a giant, open-air prison refusing to allow anyone to leave, it's really speaks to America's forbearance that it hasn't attempted to punish Canada economically, until now.
> A reporter asked if he was "considering military force to annex and acquire Canada."
> "No," replied Trump. "Economic force."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/donald-trump-canada-51st-st...
"The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State. This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear. Canadians’ taxes will be very substantially reduced, they will be more secure, militarily and otherwise, than ever before, there would no longer be a Northern Border problem, and the greatest and most powerful nation in the world will be bigger, better and stronger than ever."
"If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them."
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/19/trump-canada-annex/
We're into "reject the evidence of your eyes and ears" territory here.
> by force
part, which is the part Trump repeatedly disavowed (as your own post demonstrates).
Just a observation from my personal life, my friends who aren't broke, are still going to Florida, etc.
Some even go as far as booking a trip to Europe for a music concert instead of going to the US.
The line between "it's expensive" and "the current situation in the US sucks" is blurred.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11075088/canadian-snowbird-couple...
Florida was always a budget option for us. It's always been a quick, easy (you can drive), low risk break to get away from the cold. I just don't feel like dealing with CBP and random MAGAs right now to be honest. Wife is low-key stressed about the idea. I mean at best it's a hassle... so why bother?
Granted, as someone who lives ~40 km from the border, I'm broke and can't afford to travel, but I'm also avoiding the U.S. and have been further than 100 km from home on a number of occasions in the past year.