Wish Me Luck!
Happy New Year, everyone! I hope yours starts as pleasantly as mine did. I woke up early for the most easterly sunrise I’ve ever seen, then spent the morning hiking the Mangawhai Cliffs Walkway. Before driving to Auckland I cooled down with a little bodysurfing, and I can’t even remember how long it’s been since I’ve done that.
Now, safely in the Auckland suburbs, I’ve been eating the last of my New World bulk food and taping up Booster as best I can to protect her from manhandling by overworked baggage handlers. Last time her box was beat to hell but she ran just fine. I’ll be happy with a second round of that.
It’s possible I’ll be handled more roughly than she is. For the first time in my life I’m going to attempt to fly internationally without a passport. Whether mine was lost or stolen depends in large part on what those charges are on the now-canceled credit card I kept in the same Ziploc.
Certainly it’s my fault for losing track of it while repacking everything I own, but the fact of the matter is a hiccup like this was long overdue. I’m a scatterbrain by nature and I’ve been exhausted, running on fumes. The last couple times I made a colossal blunder like this, I was rescued by the kindness of strangers. Catching the bus to Cape Reinga, for example, I would have left Booster’s wheels in the bus depot if someone hadn’t said, “hey, you might need those.” In Tasmania it was my best thermal layer, and a hundred miles later my tent poles. On top of that, the medicine I take to manage my absentmindedness got lost in the mail, and I haven’t mentioned this until now but I’ve been muddling along without it for two months now. It’s been fine— I forgot all of that other stuff while I was on it, so really, how much worse can I get—but losing something as important as a passport was inevitable.
So tomorrow is set to be the longest day of my life, maybe in more ways than one. On the clock it’s a 43-hour day (thank you, international date line) but who knows how many of those hours I’ll spend in an interrogation room. I can’t imagine those hours go by quickly.
Hopefully the charges on the credit card are all mine, because that leaves a glimmer of hope that some honest soul might still find the passport. Replacing a passport is a pain in the ass but what troubles me most is losing all the stickers and magnets I was keeping in that same Ziploc. Until it went missing, it had always been the official Flat and Dry Storage Zone.
Anyway, wish me luck! It sure would be nice to see my family and my dog tomorrow, even if it takes 43 hours. If the magic of New Zealand holds out, some smiling gate agent may just walk up to me and hand me my Holy Ziploc saying, “Here, we’ve been waiting for you.” Given my experience in this country so far, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.