Renewed Passports

Our trip to Holland is just over a week away, with our flight scheduled to leave on April 2 from the Buffalo International Airport.  I thought all our ducks were in a row,  until Cliff received a phone call on Monday morning from our friend Brent who is a pilot for Jet Blue/Aer Lingus, the airlines I booked our flight with.  “Hey Cliff, you might want to check on your passports for your trip to Holland.  The other day a guy was scheduled to fly to the Dominican and couldn’t enter the country because his passport was too close to expiring. Call the airline to make sure your passports are valid.”

     Brent’s wife Pam stopped by on Saturday to buy a couple dozen eggs and I was telling her about our trip.  I mentioned that our passports expired on May 25^th, 2014 so we were under the wire. Pam told Brent about our trip.  When I came home from work on Monday I checked on the internet and read that there are ten that countries require a six month validity for passports.  Holland wasn’t one of them.  I thought we were off the hook, but I called the airport just to verify things. The woman didn’t know for sure so told me to call the US Consulate.  The US Consulate didn’t know so I called the JFK airport.  The woman there told me that the passport would be fine.  I told her about the ten countries that required a six month passport validity and she said I had better check with the Netherlands Embassy.  I found their phone number on the computer and learned that Holland has a three month passport validity and that we wouldn’t be allowed to enter the country and would have to return home without the correct passport.     When Cliff got home from work I explained our dilemma. It would take six to eight weeks to get the passport renewed at the post office and at least three weeks to get it renewed online   I searched for ways to expedite getting our passports renewed.  One of the services had a 600.00 fee plus the cost of the expedited passport from the U.S. Passport service. There are twenty six passport offices in the U.S. and one was in Philadelphia.  We considered what it would cost in gas, food and time and decided to pay the extra money to have it done online.  The only glitch was that it would take five to seven business days, which would be cutting it really close.     Both Cliff and I were feeling really grateful that Brent had told us about the passports. It would have been terrible to get to land at our stopover in Ireland and have to return home.  If we didn’t get the passports back in time we could reschedule our flight for later in the month.  When Cliff called Brent to thank him, he told us that he was making breakfast and cracking the eggs from our farm when he thought about us and it was on his heart to call.  His wife Pam didn’t want to alarm us if it didn’t apply to us, but he said God was telling him to call us so he did.  He also told us that we could go to Buffalo Passport Office and get the passports renewed in one day.  Buffalo is only two hours compared to the five hour drive to Philadelphia, so we decided to go that route.
I was able to schedule an automated appointment for Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. We would have the passports within five days.  The proper forms needed to be filled out, which I was able to access online. For our passport pictures Cliff went to CVS in Johnsonburg and I went to the post office in Ridgway.     We left this morning at 8:30 am to make the trip to Buffalo.  We have a GPS our kids gave us for Christmas a few years ago, but I wrote down the directions to the Buffalo Passport Agency just in case.  I’m glad I did because we got as far as Wilcox and the GPS quit working.  Cliff got out the trusty atlas and mapped out the route to Buffalo.  I drove up and when we crossed the Pennsylvania border into New York, Cliff reminded me to watch my lead foot.  I’m glad he did because we passed at least five police officers.  The New York roads are full of potholes that slowed us down.  It took a little over two hours to get downtown Buffalo.  We found a place to park the car and walked a few blocks to the Passport Agency. On the way I spotted a sky scraper with painted black and white block letters reading FIRST EDITION BOOKS.  I thought it would be nice to go to a book store if we had time.We found 111 Genesee St. and went through the glass doors to the Passport Agency. Our personal belongings had to be x-rayed and we had to go through a TBS (total body scan). Cliff had his pocket knife and was told he had to take it back out to the car. “Our car is three blocks away and the wind chill factor must be below zero.” I said.Cliff told the officer “I’ve been carrying a pocket knife since I’ve been seven years old.”  The officer kindly held the pocket knife until we left.     The lady scheduling the appointment didn’t have a record of our 11:30 appointment but let us submit our papers anyway.  After everything was processed we were told we could pick up the passports between three and four in the afternoon.  That gave us time to have a nice lunch at the Washington Street Market Deli and find the bookstore I had spotted earlier.  The two story bookstore was chock full of books neatly arranged, library style on shelves.  We looked around a couple of hours and found a few good reads.  We walked down to pick up the car from the parking garage and drove up to the Passport Agency.  Cliff left his pocket knife in the car, which made the security officers happy.  After waiting about a half hour to get the passports we were on our way home with our new passports in hand.