Spring
Break mishap
By Cassady Jeremias
On-line Forty-Niner
Long
before leaving the country this spring break,
check and recheck every passport. You never
know when a forgetful friend can devastate
an otherwise perfect plan.
I had been looking forward to this trip
since the beginning of the semester, evident
by the countdown going on my wall that finally
said, “1 day until Puerto Vallarta!”
Kim and Chrissy flew in from Northern California
Friday night, we would be flying out to
Mexico the next day. We reminisced and passed
around our passports laughing at the ugly
pictures. I picked up Chrissy’s and commented
on how young she looked.
“You must have been a teenager,” I said.
By chance I glanced at the date and realized
it had expired last June.
It was post Sept. 11, and airline security
was super tight. The only way into and out
of Mexico by air is to have a passport,
voter registration card, or original birth
certificate. This means no copies, no faxes.
“I thought they were good for 10 years,”
Chrissy kept saying, as if that would solve
something.
It turns out that passports for minors are
only good for five years. Chrissy had traveled
to Europe as a teenager, and now at 22,
was out of luck.
She sat there looking humbled as the realization
sunk in that somehow we had to get her birth
certificate in Napa, 400 miles away, into
her hands at Los Angeles International Airport
in a little over 12 hours.
It was now after 11 p.m., if we drove the
14 hours from Huntington Beach to Napa Valley
and back without potty breaks, we’d be back
at LAX at approximately 1pm. Our flight
left at 1 p.m. — that wouldn’t work.
Rescheduling the flight would be a hassle,
and flying her home early in the morning
would be too costly. Even FedEx, and courier
service was not practical.
We called Chrissy’s parents in Napa for
insight and woke them up. They rifled through
the attic and found her birth certificate.
They put it in an envelope under the doorstep
and went back to bed. At least we knew it
was there, all we had to do was get it.
Or, if we could find someone to meet us
halfway, it might work. Who would be willing,
on a Friday night, to drive halfway down
the state and meet us with her magic paper?
For some reason Chrissy couldn’t bring herself
to bother her friends, family, or even her
boyfriend. She had a million excuses. She
was ashamed. That left us in a weird situation,
fearing we’d have to volunteer our closest
saviors for Chrissy’s oversight.
Finally, at 12:30 a.m., we coaxed a friend
from Napa out of bed and onto the 5-freeway
south. We jumped in the car and sped four
hours north to Kettleman City, a halfway
point in the middle of California.
We got there remarkably about the same time,
passed off the sacred document like a flaming
torch in the Olympic relay race, thanked
our friend and jumped back in the car headed
for Los Angeles.
By the time we got home it was long past
dawn. My friends just had made a trip down
the state, back up halfway, and back down
again before the trip even officially began.
We got a two-hour nap before it was time
to leave again, for our paradise trip that
almost didn’t happen.
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