Expidite the expidited

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I am headed to the passport office this AM to get a new passport. I didn't have time to do the expidited renewal after getting back from Japan. So I made an special expiditing appointment with the passport folks in Atlanta. I am glad I only have to drive into Atlanta, not fly up to NY or Washington DC. It seems I have had to do some expiditing everytime I have renewed my passport. Passports are good for 10 years. When you get a new passport it is a time to ponder where you will be and what the passport will look like in 10 years. The pic belows shows the wear on my now cancelled passport. it was a 50 page book (the extra pages version) and 46 pages are fully used. Many countries require 3 empty pages to enter their country. So, I got full use of the larger size passport. If you need more pages, you send the passport in and they will "sew-in" more pages. The thickest passport I ever saw was at the Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan border. A truck driver I saw had a Uzbekistan passpo...

Last week I had a special treat. I had dinner out at the Speedville General Store. They make subs and pizza and have a very large selection of smokless tobacco and lotto. They sell gas, beer and video rentals. I am not sure exactly why I feel it is such a treat, but the isolation of the place makes me feel secure. It is a place that is basically unknown and I feel as though I could hide there and no one could find me. It is especially true in the middle of a long January freeze like now. Everyone is locked down for weeks with the cold, ice and inhospitableness. It is remarkablly close to my house and Ithaca as well as being off the beaten path. You might as well be in northern Quebec or an island somewhere. I ordered a tuna sub and the shopkeeper came by me sitting at the formica booth seating, grabed some tuna cans off the grocery shelf and got me dinner.

The big reason Speedville is so secluded is that there are no state routes involved. That and it is not on the way to anywhere unless you know about the backroads in south-central NY state. It does amaze me that we have such out of the way places in NY state only 4 hours away from NYC. It also amazes me that you can find exotic places close to wherever you are.

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