06/18/07 MON:
---In line at 4 am at passport office. The first in line got there at midnight. Amy was 18th or so--not bad. By the time the line moved indoors at 6:30 there were hundreds, going around the block. A week ago there were thousands, before the passport requirement on trips to Canada and Mexico was lifted. I waited in hotel room, hoping Amy would come back with her passport and we could leave for Polk City before the rush hour in Chicago. She did get back to hotel around 10:00 but not yet with passport. She had to return at 3:30 to finally pick it up. Piddled around the streets of downtown Chicago another few hours, having had to check out of hotel at 11am. Turns out they wouldn’t give her a passport because they had somehow finally come up with a tracking number for the original passport. It was sitting in the post office at Polk City. Of course. But how could we have known it would finally arrive the day before she had to leave? The Belgians had bought her a non-refundable ticket, booked her in a hotel, scheduled her as first presenter at conference, set up around her schedule in the first place. She couldn’t not go.
---I-290 out of Chicago was expectedly clogged but at least mostly moving. Eventually we got on the incredibly smooth Ronald Reagan toll-road and made it back to Polk City a little after 10 pm, in time for Amy to get a good night’s sleep.