Yes, ladies and gentlepeople, Better Half and I are, unfortunately, firmly ensconced within the stupidity that is Kalifornistan.  As such, this new category was generated by me, your eloquent and intelligent host, as a way of documenting all of the... interesting... and... entertaining... things that go on within this "state".  Yeah, I am that bored.  And, yeah, I do have that many things to kibitz about. 

So, what better place to start than by trying to get into the "state" of Kalifornistan itself?  Well, ladies and germs, unlike basically all of the other 49 states of this Grand Old Union (well, excluding Alaska, for obvious reasons that will soon become apparent), in order to drive from any other state into California (ok you can only do it from three other states), one must first go through customs.  Yes, I said "customs" - like the kind of things you have to do when you go from one nation to another - not one state to another.  Now, granted, these "customs" are not quite as stringent as those when you go from a nation to another nation, but consider this excerpt from Wikitravel: 

All major road and airport entrances (including entrances from other US States) to California have agricultural inspection stations to ensure that some fruits and vegetables do not cross into a region where they may come into contact with the farms in the Central Valley. Often, travellers are subject to border inspection (somewhat strict for domestic travel) and asked if they have been on a farm or are carrying organic matter with them. These measures are likely to be increasingly stringent as extreme biosecurity problems arise from travel-carried fruit and vegetables, imported plants and animals, or even from packing material that may carry bioinvader species.

Form what I have read, and what I observed myself, "often" equates to "always" in realistic terms, and "somewhat" is a rather loose way of saying "insanely".  As with all wiki enterprises, this one seems somewhat prone to ... liberal editing.  Of course, I suppose any degree of strictness compared to no degree of strictness could be qualified as "somewhat" - how do you compare something to nothing? 

Anywise, verbage aside, the entire concept is ludicrous.  Better Half and I successfully crossed seven other state borders besides the last Arizona-Califonia border, and were never stopped and subjected to an inspection of our vehicle.  Hell, I have been to the majority of this nation's states throughout the course of my life, and never once was my family's vehicle stopped at the state border.  In fact, one time I asked my father if states had the same kind of arrangements that we had with Canada (we moved cross-country shortly after visiting Canada once), and he all but laughed at me, and explained that states did not do such things. 

Fortunately, through the course of those familial cross-country trips, we never swung down to California. 

All that said, I will grant that the "inspection" Better Half and I were subjected to was laughable - some old guy stuck his head in my window and asked if we had any plants, nuts, firewood, vegetables, fruits, or other organic matter that we were transporting from outside of the state into the state.  After I responded in the negative, he looked at the car from front to back, cracked a joke about the disconnect between my Georgia Tech bumper sticker and my Florida license plates, and let us through.  If that is an inspection, I am Mickey Mouse. 

However, pathetically-executed or not, the very concept of a vehicle inspection to travel from one state to another is inherently distasteful, more than a little annoying, and could potentially open up a whole massive can of worms that people just do not want to deal with.  Of course, considering how Nanny-State-ish we have become, I could be very, very wrong on that last count. 

So, what better way to be welcomed to Kalifornistan, eh?  As if I needed more evidence that this "state" should not actually be qualified as such, that first nail in the coffin provided at the border was one hell of a large one. 

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