I begin travel in something like six hours. I have had a passport of my own for something like 6 hours. To make this happen, I traveled to Houston to the regional passport agency.
Today has been an amazing day of 500 miles, the longest line I’ve ever seen, highs, lows, and ultimate triumph over federal bureaucracy shenanigans.
Beginning at 3am this morning, I made my way to Houston. I went to sleep around midnight, after two hours of laying in bed trying to calm down from being very, very angry. I can’t say that I have ever been that angry in the past, and I hope to never be again.
Anyway, like I said. Four hour trip on three hours of sleep. I was tired to the point where I pulled off at a rest stop about halfway there, crawled in my truck’s back seat, and took a nap for an hour. This was the first time I’ve ever done that, and I found it pleasantly refreshing. I arrived in Houston an hour later than intended, however, so I had to contend with a bit of traffic on I-45. Once I got downtown, I found that I did not have the requisite $5 needed to park, so I set off on a journey to find a gas station. This actually failed. I eventually ran across a Walgreens and got cash back on my purchase of Advil.
So, an hour and change after I intended, I parked my truck in a fairly shady garage and sought out the federal building. This turned out to be a good 7 blocks away, but it wasn’t a bad walk. As I approached the building, I noticed a line. Upon inquiry, it turned out to be the no-appointment passport line, which snaked through a rather long breezeway, doubled back on itself, exited a door midway down the breezeway, headed directly for the street maybe 150 feet away, then made a right turn and ran all the way to the stop light at the corner. Luckily for me this was directly under I-45 (see the block of Smith, St. Joseph, Louisiana, and some mystery street that runs under I-45 right there in downtown Houston), so it was nice and shady. Getting to the breezeway took a little over two hours, at which time it was suggested to us by the staff that it was unlikely that we would get in today, due to our place toward the end of the line. A woman in a green shirt came by after that, asking each person their travel date. It turns out that she was pulling people out of line who were traveling the next day, and sending them to the appointment line, which contained 100% fewer people at the moment. Considering my circumstances, I qualified.
The next hour and a half or so (I lost track of time quite a bit during the day due to several factors) was spent in this line, as the guard taking people kept asking the line for people who had appointments and confirmation numbers. The majority of people in this line, 9 people or so, did not have these things, so we were ignored for a fair while. At around two, one of the women in line got somewhat worried about our not moving, and talked to the security guard. It turns out our not going up immediately was a bit of a mistake on his and our parts, being that we were confused. We then went up with the next group.
Once we were let in the building through a very controlled elevator operation involving no less than four security guards, we went up to the 10th floor. The 10th floor consisted of two conference rooms, one with eight rows of chairs, and one with six. First, we were placed in the eight row room at the back. A security guard would occasionally take two rows into the mystic unknown, which turned out to be the next room. Sometime around 2:45, I was finally taken from the second holding room to the elevator, and eventually down to the 4th floor.
The fourth floor is where all the magic happens. Once off the elevator, we were placed into a line of around 20 people down the hall a bit from the magic room. In groups of 5, we were eventually introduced to the final (ish) room of the day. There were windows similar to a bursar’s office at a university – three on the left wall, 14 or so along the back wall, and two on the right wall. When we entered this room, we were placed into yet another queue (number 6 by my count) that snaked around twice before being directed to the 3 windows on the left. While in this line, we were asked to order our papers in a specific manner, and introduced to the first actual progress of the day at a window. I presented my Texas drivers license and my itinerary, as I obviously had applied previous to this day and the Houston office already had my application in full. Others had to fill out the application and present a proof of citizenship. The window lady then gave me a number, B0669. Those applying for the first time were given numbers beginning with A.
The distinction between A and B was soon apparent as only A numbers were called to windows 4 through 14. B numbers were never called; instead, the names of the affected person was called. I received my number at 3:56 pm, and my name was called just after 5pm. I walked up, presented my license and itinerary for time the second, and was given a slip of paper with my name and a time of 5pm for passport pick-up. Then the second window lady told me to go downstairs to get my passport. Being that I was very much interested in having said passport, I did so.
Downstairs in what appeared to be a break room, two people were calling out names for passports. The apparent protocol for this was newcomers were to present the slip, and one person would check for the corresponding passport envelope, and if it was not present the person would wait until their name was called due to a new passport coming down from the sacred floor with their name on it. This was a great time for me to grab my first food of the day (a bag of pretzels), and relax. Sadly, my name was not called by the time 1st floor operations were called off at 5:30, and I was sent back up to see the wizard on the 4th floor again. This time, the same individuals slowly called names until they got to me.
After presenting ID again to confirm that I was truly me, I was given the magical passport. Then, I left the building and hiked the few blocks to my truck in a warm late spring Houston thunderstorm. After some tomfoolery between myself and the layout of roads in downtown Houston, I found my way onto I-45 northbound, and made my way home over the next four hours.
So, over all I’m satisfied with my federal building passport experience, despite it taking all day and that it should not have happened in the first place if things were as they should be. All the staff in Houston was pleasant and helpful despite the crushing number of people, and individuals made a successful effort to get passports to those leaving the next day. That’s really all I wanted out of them in the first place, and despite the horrible day I had I’m happy that I got what I needed to leave the country.
I still plan to write my representative concerning the State Dept. being a running joke with no punchline, however. When one of the major topics on a local AM talk station this morning was the woeful state of the passport distribution capacity of the United States over the last few months, something is wrong. I believe the host described the biggest citizen services meltdown in the federal government right now, topping the disaster that is immigration.
Note: the two remaining subjects I wanted to cover are definitely not getting covered before the trip. Passport issues took up the time I wanted to spend on them, and as much as I’d like to go on to more technical and detailed subjects, I’d produce a poor showing of them in the remaining hour I have before rousing my roommate, collecting Bryan, and heading off to the airport.
