Pass The Port.

My girly-girl made it safe and sound to South Africa, and by all accounts is having a wonderful time.  I imagine it’s a bit of sensory overload, but hopefully she’ll be able to absorb enough to have memories she can relish for a good long time.

So, during my recent trip to Wales I kept a travel journal (provided to me on the trip to the airport by Pandora… thank you my dear!).  Every day or so I’d write in it, or more as I was stuck in airports and had nothing better to do anyway.  I’m going to transcribe the entries to the blog, on an journal-day-per-blog-entry basis, and include pictures and such to accompany them as well.  This will allow me to tell the tale of the trip to anyone interested in hearing it all in one, consistent go.

I have my thoughts as I had them at the time all nicely written down when they were fresh, and I don’t have to rely on my (famously) poor memory to recreate them.  I have an exceptionally visual memory, and I find that I do a very unsatisfactory job of trying to recall and relay experiences to folks verbally.  If only people could climb into my head and watch the movie my memory projects onto the back of my skull, then they’d see what I see.

At any rate, the tale of my journey wouldn’t be complete without the inclusion of the Terror of the Passport story, and that’s as good a place to start as any.

** WARNING — This is a very long post.  I’m not going to bother breaking it up into multiple entries so read it at your own pace, skim it, skip it… your choice.

So May 1st I went to apply for a passport.  The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs stated that due to increased volume, it would take 10-12 weeks for standard passport processing, and 6-8 weeks for expedited.  No problem.  My girl hadn’t made her first trip here yet (it was planned, but hadn’t come to pass), and I didn’t have a date for my journey, but knew that I should get things in the works because at some point I was going to go visit her.  I didn’t bother with expediting and went with the standard (why pay the extra $60 when you don’t have to?).  I downloaded, printed and completed the passport application, went to the main post office downtown, had them take my picture — a really good idea as they make sure it conforms to the U.S. DoS requirements, and only cost $15 — handed over my birth certificate, the forms, and a money order for $97 and walked out whistling a happy tune.

Not long after I finally picked a travel date, September 14th, and determined that it was 20 weeks from when I applied… plenty of time for them to process my passport.  Time passed, as it is wont to do, and about the 10 week mark I checked on-line, and the status was listed as “processing”.  Fine.  I also provided my email address so I could get status reports as things changed.

Time continued to pass.  Once I was well past 12 weeks I checked on-line again, and was still listed as “processing”.  I sent a formal inquiry to them through the website, and waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.

Round ’bout the 16th week, I get an email saying

“Thank you for submitting your passport application!  It is currently being processed.  You should receive your passport within 10-12 weeks from the date you applied.  If you are travelling within 2 weeks and have not received your passport and have further questions about the status of your application, you may contact the National Passport Information Center.”

Wait.  We’re now at 16 weeks since I applied, and you’re just now processing my passport, and somewhat suggesting that the 10-12 week counter starts now.  And you’re telling me not to bother contacting you until I am 2 weeks from traveling (which was backed up by info on their site).  Great.

So I spend the next two weeks growing increasingly nervous.  At the 15-days-till-departure mark I call the NPIC.  I’m told by a very friendly lady (surprising for a government agency) that yes, my application is being processed (in New Hampshire), but that there was a problem with my proof of identification and that a letter was mailed out the day before requesting more proof from me… 5 pieces specifically.  I asked what was acceptable and was given a veritable laundry-list of things, all of which I could provide with the exception of a military ID.  I expressed concern that by the time I received the letter and turned around and sent them the info they required, that there wouldn’t be enough time for them to finish processing my application before I had to depart.  I asked if I could go to the Houston passport agency (1 of 14 in the country) and submit my proof of ID.  She said yes, that Houston could take over the application and finish it there, but that in all likelihood that I would be starting a new application and I had better go prepared with new pictures and everything.  I would have to make an appointment (via and automated phone line) because the agencies do not take walk-ins.

Surprisingly I was able to make an appointment for Friday (8:30 the following morning — was expecting it to be the following week at the earliest).  Woke up at stupid-o-clock in the morning and drove into Houston.  I parked and made my way through the metal detectors right at 8am.  After apparently stealthily tromping past the armed guards, into the elevator and up to the 4th floor, I found out that I had to wait downstairs, and to ask one of the alert fellows with guns specifically where.

Was shown to a room that contained about 50 other folks who lucked into the same appointment time (silly me, thinking that time was mine alone).  Scanning the room, I decided to sit in that one seat left in the first row.  After a half an hour of people slowly trickling in, and me wondering if I was going to actually see a human being any time before the afternoon, a guard poked his head in and told us that he was going to start leading folks up an elevator-full at a time, and would the first row kindly follow him.  Ha!  I just moved up from 50th in line to 8th (sometimes it pays off to sit in the front of the class)!  Upon entering the elevator, I slipped immediately to the side near the door and let the remainder of the people fill in the back of the car.  That little tactic pushed me to 3rd in line when we exited.

When it was my turn I stepped up and told my tale.  As I was talking, I could see the lady becoming more confused.  When I told her that the folks on the phone said they could just take over my application, she excused herself to go talk to someone about that.  Fantastic.  That was going to be my death knell, asking a government agency to do something outside of their normal parameters.  We’ve all been to the DMV, and know that even smiling at them is taken as some sort of an act of aggression, but asking them for something special was grounds to be attacked.  This was the Fed, and sure as shit they were going to send me packing.  She returned, handed me a printed “now serving” style number and was told that they could help me.  Really?!  Color me impressed.

My number was B166.  The digital board showed that they were serving A001.  Um, was I now behind 1165 other people, or was this a special numbering sequence for troublemakers like me?  About 45 minutes later I was called to a special window, the wonderfully nice lady there listened to me patiently, and laid out what she was going to do.  No, they weren’t going to take over or start a new application for me… I was already in the system with New Hampshire, and it would be faster just to resolve the issues at hand.  She took all of the 20 or so forms of ID I brought with me, photocopied them all, put her little rubber-stamp on them and signed it.  She said she was going to overnight that paperwork to them, to arrive on Tuesday since Monday was Labor Day.  It would be coming from their agency, so would be all official and such.  I filled out a FedEx overnight shipping tag that she could send along with it so they could expedite the passport to me on my own dime.  I asked if she had done everything from her side that could be done, and if I had done the same from my side.  Yes we respectively did, and there was nothing more to do but wait and check back every few days or so.

I left feeling positive.  I was in a good mood.  I even got to work in time to only lose half a day.  Checking my mail that evening, I notice that the letter from New Hampshire had arrived!  Ha!  I beat it to the punch… but upon reading it my heart sank.  Not only did they want a boatload of ID, but there was a 5 page “supplemental worksheet” they wanted me to fill out and return with the ID.  Crap.  The absence of the worksheet was a sure-fire way for them to delay my passport even further.  I scrambled to provide all the info they wanted: a complete work history, a complete education history, a complete list of every place I ever lived and a complete list of my immediate family with birthdates and the cities they were born in.  They even wanted my baptismal information.  Damn, I didn’t remember half of this crap.

Many calls and a stress filled evening later I had it all completed.  The next morning I schlepped myself down to FedEx and overnighted the worksheet, a duplicate copy of all the ID I provided in Houston, another FedEx overnight return tag, and a polite letter explaining everything again and begging them to please hurry the fuck up.  With any luck, they should get both FedEx packets at the same time.  I called the NPIC hotline and told them what I had done as well, and gave them the tracking number for the packet I just sent.  I was now just shy of 2 weeks from departure, with no passport — 18 weeks after I started this whole mess.

A few calls the following week let me know that they started re-processing the application on Wednesday, and the folks at the NPIC hotline fired off an “urgent” email to New Hampshire agency reminding them that my departure date was a little over a week away.  Come Monday, five days before I departed I called again to check the status.  The lady on the phone was phrasing things in a manner that hinted that she could see what the current status of my app was, and when pressed, she said she could not provide me with that info.  I asked her for an off-the-record forecast of my chances of getting my passport before I was supposed to leave on Friday — “not so good” was her reply.  Wonderful.  She suggested I go to the Houston agency and have them start the process over again.  I told her that not only did I take time off work to attempt that, but that they shot that plan down in favor of what they did.  I thanked her and hung up.

I called the airline and asked what my options were.  I had until 24 hours before my departure to reschedule my flight (at the low, low cost of an additional $200) or lose the tickets altogether.  That didn’t leave me much time to just sit and wait to see if the passport showed up.

Despondent, I talked to my girl and we came up with another date.  Unfortunately, it had to be in November as she was going to be gone all of October.  It would have been near five months since I saw her last at that point.  This was going to suck.

Eating lunch later that day I decided to do a little homework on the web.  I’d read lots of news reports in the last few months about how people were getting all pissed off about the exorbitant delays with passports, so I figured that people were mouthing off about how they got a few days from leaving and still didn’t have theirs, and maybe there were some clever solutions they came up with.

Bingo.  I hit pay dirt.

Consistently, folks were having success with two avenues when it came down to the wire: The U.S. Consular Task Force Watchdog Group and their local Congressman (and they provided the contact info I needed for the watchdog group).  The DoS’s Bureau of Consular Affairs is the agency that oversees all things passport.  The watchdog group are the folks who respond to abuses and neglect within the passport system.  I called them first and, again, told my story of woe.  The nice gentleman on the phone seemed gruff, but sympathetic, he took my information and vowed to see that something was done about it, and I might get a call the next day.  I then phoned the Congressman’s office, and was quite surprised to learn that they have staffers for this and other issues (like tax stuff) that would act on my behalf and light a fire under the Fed.  I needed only fill out a release of information form (to give them legal right to be my agent in this, and to provide all the details about my case) and fax it to them.  I did.

Literally an hour later I receive a phone call from the NPIC, with a chipper and very very polite woman on the other end.  She called to inform me that my application was complete, and that they would be shipping my passport out the next day via FedEx overnight, and I should receive it no later than Wednesday morning.

*blink*
*blink*

One of the two contacts I just made got a hold of the NPIC and jammed a size 13 boot clear up their ass so far they could taste shoe leather.  Jeebus!  If I’d have known that, I’d have called them a week ago and saved myself a lot of stress.

As it turns out, they got my passport to FedEx that day, and I had it in my hot little hands on Tuesday.

The first moral of my story is this: If you don’t have a passport, go and apply for it now.  NOW!! It costs about $112 (including the photo from the post office).  They are good for ten years, and you might just decide that you want to take a trip out of the country.  You need them now even to go to-and-fro from Mexico and Canada — and that is the exact reason for all the slow-downs… literally 10x the normal number of applications have been filed this year.  Also, they are the best form of ID, even more so than your driver’s license (a passport is a Fed issued ID, your license is a state issued ID, and the passport is much harder to get and more accepted).  If you had a passport and it’s expired, or about to, renew it now.  NOW!! See above.

The second moral of this story is: No matter how polite the NPIC people are — and trust me, every single person I talked to was friendly, intelligent sounding, compassionate, and oozed an aura of urgent helpfulness — they are lying to you through their teeth.  They are anesthetizing your sense of outrage at being bent over and sodomized dry by the system.  They are not your pals, so work the system to your advantage.  Make the calls and climb over their heads as much and as frequently as you can.  Here are the contacts you might eventually need:

National Passport Information Center: (877) 487-2778
U.S. Consular Task Force Watchdog Group: (202) 647-7948

Just check the web for whoever your local Congressman is, and call his office and talk to the helpful people there.  This is the one time I can happily say “this is your tax dollars at work”.  I suspect that they made the call that lit the fire and got me my passport, but hell, call everyone and let them race to see who helps you first.

This is the end of my long-winded story.

**MESSAGE ENDS**