We had a very busy couple of weeks on our whirlwind Thanksgiving tour this year. We landed at Ft. Lauderdale airport in the middle of a monsoon. The monsoon was bad enough but the customs and immigration procedures at FLL airport were atrocious. First, we stood in a holding room for 30 minutes. Then, we picked up our suitcases that were soaking wet. The next step was to drag our drenched luggage through the Disney-like ropes which took us over 2 hours to get to the Immigration officer. Finally cleared, we headed to the hotel shuttle pickup area which was a sidewalk covered with an awning. The rain was blowing sideways at this point so when we reached the hotel….5 hours after landing….I had to hang all of our clothes from the suitcases around the hotel room to dry. We will never fly into FLL again if at all possible to avoid! After a quick drive across the state, we enjoyed meeting Bill’s newest grandson and seeing how much the other two have grown. Bill’s oldest grandson is a teenager now and we learned quickly to get seconds at the dinner table before he made his third run for the buffet. Both of Bill’s girls are doing well and it was wonderful to spend some time with them. Thanksgiving at the Miller household was a quiet affair this year due to many of the kids’ work schedules and other family obligations. Everett flew in from Vegas so it was great to see him again. After lunch, we headed to Bill’s sister’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. This dinner was not a quiet affair as 24 family members and friends gathered around the table! Bill and I swore we would not eat again after lunch but the dinner was too good to pass! We’ll diet in 2024….
After the holiday, Bill and I headed down to Florida to prepare for our visit to the Miami passport office. On the way, we stopped at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg and the Ringling Brothers Circus Museum in Sarasota. The Dali Museum was very interesting and we learned a lot about the history of the Surrealism movement. That group certainly enjoyed their share of drugs back in the day! The special exhibit at the museum was Impressionists and I have decided to give Impressionism a try with my painting since I am way too logical for Surrealism….and I don’t do drugs. The Ringling Museum has been high on our list so we were glad we could fit it in this year. The highlight of the museum was the miniature replica of the circus done by Howard Tibbals. Howard and his wife worked on the replica for over 50 years and it was amazing! His wife told her mother that she was lucky to find a man who liked to play with dolls as much as she did. The replica had its own dedicated building. The details were incredible. Howard often put in details such as money and tickets in the registers even though no one would ever see them. When asked why he added those details that no one would ever see, he responded, “I’ll know they are there. That’s all that matters!” When walking around the display, the lights would dim and then the circus would light up at ‘night’. We saw the stables, the dressing areas, the mess tent, the practice rings, the midway and of course, the big top. The big top had trapeze artists that swung around and horses that moved about the ring. Of all the things I have seen in the world, I must say this display was one of my favorites. I could have walked around there for hours. I just kept thinking how Howard would have felt seeing me do a jig of happiness when the big top trapezes started swinging under all the lights! The rest of the museum was interesting as well and Bill and I enjoyed recalling the acts we had seen as children. The Ringling house sat right on the bay and was an unusual Venetian style that was lovely. They also had an art museum but we both felt we had enough culture from the Dali Museum to last us a bit so we headed on our way. Our passport appointment awaited! Why were we going to the passport office? A few months ago, I noticed that our passport Visa pages which the countries stamp upon entry were almost full. What a wonderful problem to have! Unfortunately, sticking new pages in the existing passport was not an option and we could not get a new passport issued outside of the United States without sending our passports via mail for 12 weeks. Needless to say, that plan was not going to work for us given that we need our passport daily in Colombia. If we go to a hotel, we need a passport. If we buy something at the Home Center, we need a passport. We carry them with us everywhere. Plus, we have tons of trips planned for 2024 and have no time to waste waiting on the mail! So, when we landed in the States, I called the passport hotline to make an emergency appointment. Once we had the appointment, we had to gather our old passports, proof of immediate travel abroad and of course, a government form and a pocket full of money. Luckily, the Miami office had an appointment the day before we were leaving out of the Ft. Lauderdale airport. The scary part of the situation was that if everything was not exactly right or if we were late, the office would turn us away without a new passport. Our hotel in Miami was 11 miles from the passport office and our appointment was at 9:30am. We left our hotel at 8:00am and due to horrible traffic, we squeaked into the passport parking lot at 9:22am! Then came the stress of waiting in line for the paperwork approval to enter the official passport office. I watched as the woman turned several people away but when we handed her our packet, we were escorted through security into the inner sanctum! We were greeted by Rivera who had to have been working at the office for at least 40 years. Unlike most government employees I have encountered through the years, Rivera was hilarious! He made fun of Bill’s passport photo and called him “exotic” because his shirt was low on one shoulder. From that moment on, anytime he saw us, he would make some sort of teasing comment. We were then greeted by a lovely woman at the window who looked over our paperwork, took our payment and told us to come back at 1pm for our passports. After the hectic morning in traffic, we did not venture very far and arrived back at 12:30pm. As we waited for our name to be called, the overhead speaker would call out names one by one. We began to see a pattern. “Maria Lopez. Juan Lopez. Maria Rodriguez. Juan Rodriguez. Maria Carlos. Juan Carlos.” Every once in a while, a “Jose Lopez” would sneak into the mix. When it came time for our names, we heard, “Sally Miller. William Thornton.” “Who didn’t know that was going to happen!” laughed Bill as we made our way to the window. Once again, a delightful woman was there to assist us and handed us our brand new passports with lots of shiny, blank pages just waiting to be filled with stamps! As we headed out the door holding hands and giddy with our success of the day, we heard Rivera laugh and say, “Oh, how sweet is he?”….. When arriving back in Colombia, we were glad to find Galt waiting for us and we are looking forward to a few days of quiet followed by a few boat projects that are on our short list. Have a wonderful week and be sure to make your travel plans to visit the Ringling Circus Museum in 2024! You do not even need a passport!
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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