My Latest Book of Dreams

I received my new passport in the mail recently, which for a travel journalist is a joy to behold – a combination global license/get-out-of-jail-free card (although in reality, it offers none of these powers).

Who cares? I’m enjoying the contrasts with passport 452043400 (a number I can still recite from memory). For example, my new passport’s smooth, snappy blue cover and gold lettering feel a bit strange and unfamiliar in my hands compared with my previous passport. The new model’s cover contours are razor-sharp compared with the weathered edges of the old version.

In fact, fear consumes me as I start to flip through the pages. I’m concerned I'll initiate the inevitable fraying process. I can already see the determined yet disinterested TSA agent blithely spreading it open, bending the seams so the front and back pages meet. Ugh. Deep breath.

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I’m happy to report that for me, the renewal process was surprisingly efficient. Because I was renewing my existing passport, I was not required to appear in person. Instead, I completed a U.S. Department of State form online, printed the form, and then mailed it overnight back to the State Department via UPS.

Inside the package, I included a check for $170, based on the $110 renewal fee plus a $60 “expedite fee” that promised the passport’s return in four to six weeks. Factoring in U.S. mail service developments over the past year, that sure sounded better than the 10-12 weeks promised for “routine” processing. Even so, I felt I was still taking a chance.

During the following days, the tracking data indicated the package did arrive safely in government hands. Yet as the weeks went by, I wondered if I’d made a grave mistake. I feared there was no guarantee I’d see my new passport in time for a tentative Caribbean trip. My return to the travel landscape seemed threatened by a foolhardy reliance on the mail in uncertain times.

Amazingly, the passport was back, in a secure envelope in my mailbox, exactly four weeks to the day I’d mailed it out. I’m scoring this as another triumph for the new administration in Washington, D.C. Anyway, as it turns out my fears were a bit misplaced as the trip was canceled (sometimes happens).

Nevertheless, new passport in hand, I’m ready to begin planning my return to airports, airplanes, resorts, cruise ships and other forms of global travel. I’d be less than honest if I did not admit to a measure of trepidation as I return to the skies and seas.

I’m confident that, fully vaccinated, my health is mostly ensured, but there’s some unease with the looming encounters with the “new normal.” I’m of course prepared to adhere to all required protocols, but I do worry about the other travelers who don’t respect the guidelines to the same degree and lack the regard to their fellow global citizens to do all they can to keep us all as healthy as possible.

Those are the breaks. I’ve come this far, and I’m not about to stop journeying. I do wonder if I can again match the diverse destinations that I was fortunate to visit in the last decade. Between 2013 and 2015 alone I traveled to Brazil, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia, Sint Maarten, and Trinidad and Tobago.

My retired passport also features stamps from Antigua and Barbuda, the British Virgin Islands, Aruba, Barbados, Chile, Colombia, the Cayman Islands, Greece, Jamaica, Italy, Martinique, Mexico, Peru, St. Kitts and Nevis and the Turks and Caicos Islands. That’s a lot of traveling.

With the terrible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic apparently easing, but leisure travel altered forever (or at least for my lifetime), I wonder if I will ever again have an opportunity to build up an immeasurable bank of wonderful experiences and memories over the next decade. I’m quite eager to learn the answer.