Blog Post: Marooned in Miami

This time for my flight to Paris to meet my wife Norma I did everything perfectly. For the 9pm flight on Caribes airline — FrenchBee — I arrived at Miami airport at 4pm. It just seemed prudent. I did all the things you do, I checked my one bag electronically at the kiosk, I managed to secure a much better seat for an extra $20, I managed to separate fact from fiction regarding the time the counter would open, some said 6, some said 5, it turned out 5 was correct. I got in the rope line, the very first one! As people lined up I turned to the French guy behind me and proclaimed, “This is the first time I’ve ever been first in the line!”

When I got to the counter, presented my bag to be checked and handed the employee my passport, she said to me, “This passport expires within 90 days of today.” She walked away from the counter and conferred with another employee. She came back to the counter. She looked at me. She said, you cannot board this plane because this passport expires less than 90 days from today.” There was some weak negotiation on my part, while I adjusted to the cold hard fact that she wasn’t going to let me on the airplane and then I wheeled my bag over to a chair where I sat down and watched the other people in line get their boarding passes.

Should I go back to my brother Jonathan’s house in Fort Lauderdale? He had just dropped me off three hours before. Or should I stay the night here at the airport hotel and figure it out from there? I walked over to the counter of the airport hotel, very close to Door 13 — (Oh, Door 13, I should have known!) and asked the employee behind the counter if rooms were available and what was the cost. Yes, $325 a night — they’d just gone down in price! I said no thanks, and explained to her what had just happened. She said she’d never heard of that rule. I said, OK, you’re a travel professional at the airport and you’ve never heard of it either. It was mildly comforting. I’m not a complete idiot.

Oh, but my wife Norma of course knew about it. She knows everything. She knew about it and was surprised that I didn’t know about it. I didn’t know about it but was not surprised that I didn’t know about it because I am a regular screwup. I had to face the fact that our planned meetup in Paris, for a few days looking at art and eating great food with our great friend from American whom we’d not seen in many years, who had, like us, endured the hardship of Covid and some deep, heartbreaking, personal losses, well, it didn’t look like I was going to get there. She was going to do our long-planned, carefully planned, vacation alone. I had to face the fact: Hard as I bear down on the details, I screw things up. Or perhaps to put it more gently, I find that some detail, some requirement in the rules regarding European residency, rental car restrictions, passports, insurance cards, etc., some little detail has eluded me and I am screwed. When I was a little boy my parents subscribed to the New Yorker magazine and I liked the cartoons but there was one cartoon I found funny but did not really understand. It was a drawing of a man with a screw through his midsection. The caption just said, “Screwed.” I didn’t exactly in an adult way get it but it fascinated me and I knew it was in some way funny. In the way kids understand/do not understand adult stuff. That image often occurs to me in such moments.

Anyway, so I took the MiaMover to the TriRail and wheeled my bags into the bike car, sat in a seat and gathered my stuff around me like a little fortress, and rode up to the Fort Lauderdale station. I got off and called my brother. I bought a bag of Cheezits from the vending machine, and a bottle of lemonade. I read the ingredients on the bottle of lemonade and bought a bottle of water instead. I sat on a bench and ate the Cheezits. They were delicious.

Three days later, today, Sunday March 26, I am staying in the beautiful home of a friend in Miami. Last night we watched FAU beat Kansas State in the March Madness game. We ate well. I have an appointment at the Miami Passport Office for Tuesday, April 4, before which time I will fill out the online passport renewal form, gather my documents, get my passport photo taken and make sure I have secured a flight to Rome within 14 days of my passport office appearance.

There are quicker ways. There are passport expediters. Friends and strangers alike have offered me their generous opinions and recommendations on passport expediters to use. One friend has generously offered to foot the rather exorbitant bill for one of the passport expediters. But it’s Sunday morning, securing the appointment itself was a bit of an ordeal involving repeated phone calls (the only route to an appointment) during which it seemed at times that the number was not functional, then that it was busy, busy, busy. Finally I got through to make the appointment and the guy on the other end of the line was so polite, efficient and intelligently spoken that I am kind of sold on the U.S. government approach, as, also, it is the U.S. government I’m dealing with, not some intermediary company. I rather like the idea of dealing directly with the agency that will issue the passport. But I will dutifully read over the expediting company’s offer. I just, at this point, like the certainty of the April 4, 8:30 am appointment at the Miami Passport Office. Maybe I’m still a little shook up. I guess I am. But that’s where I’m at, and I thought I’d make a blog post about it, after doing a little yoga in the beautiful guest bedroom of my kind friends in Miami.