New Hampshire goddamn

My whole family (sans me of course, because I'm planning a wedding like it's a second full time job) is headed to Germany for six weeks. My sister has a nightmare passport story, which I thought I would share. She filed for her new passport in March, they leave on Thursday, and she just got her passport last night. Travelers beware. If your passport is about to expire, start the renewal process now.

Here is a copy of the email she sent telling us her horror story:

So Jack and I drove the hour and a half to Philadelphia and joined the line at 6:30am. There were already 40 people ahead of me. The people waiting in line with me were all very nice and we passed the 4 hours of wait time by playing fun games like "Guess where I would go if I had a passport" and "How many minutes until my plane is departing". We practically wrote a screenplay for that Fahrenheit 911 director to produce entitled "Expedite This." We swapped war stories of how many inconsistent directions we had been told over the past two weeks from the passport hotline. I bonded with the 20 other people whose passports were in the black hole office of New Hampshire.

But then at 2:55pm it all became worth it as I was handed my reissued passport with a slightly frazzled picture of me and my named spelled correctly (not everyone was as lucky at this stage and there were a few typos that had to be redone). I am happy to say that all the nice people waiting with me also got their passports today. I pretty much won the "most-wronged" contest because I had submitted my application the longest ago (March) and had traveled the furthest (from Austin). But I felt particularly bad for a woman who flew up from Miami, stayed in a hotel (costing her $700) and was flying back to Miami tonight to catch her plane to Ireland tomorrow. She had been saving for this trip for two years. She and her husband are taking their autistic daughter on a trip that the daughter requested. She got her passport and left with enough time to get to the airport for her flight home. She was right in front of me in line so we had a lot of time to bond. And P will be making it to Greece on Saturday and S will be able to attend her family reunion in Jamaica this weekend. B will be celebrating his 35th birthday at Hedonism in Jamaica where apparently everyone walks around naked all the time. (B won least sympathetic story. We told him he better come up with a new one before talking with the passport officials).

So all is well on this end and we will be traveling as planned on Thursday. If your passport expires within the next two years, I would go ahead and start the process tomorrow. And if you know of anyone else with a story like mine, tell them to go to Philly with or without an appt. When we get back, I will be starting a petition to remove New Hampshire from the union and I would appreciate everyone's support. I already have 20 signatures.