Passport Renewal – Proof I’m Getting Old

I just renewed my passport for the third time. Since I didn’t do any international travel until after college (not counting Canada, like Canada’s really another country…) you can do the math and conclude that it’s been 20 years since I graduated. Damn, when did I get so old?

The worst part is looking at the passport photos. Not that any of them are flattering, but I definitely used to have more hair.

What’s cool about looking at passports is that in many ways they reveal your life. My first two passports are clearly two separate parts of my life.

Passport 1 is musician life. It has by far the coolest stamps. There are multiple Japanese work visa stamps (from my Ringling Brothers days), a stamp from Saipan (how many people have been to Saipan? How many even know where it is?), stamps from a variety of Caribbean countries (cruise ship days), and some European stamps. At the end of musician life I settled into regular work life, but I didn’t do much cool travel so there aren’t any good stamps in the passport during the second half of this passport.

Passport 2 is married life. The very first stamp is Tahiti, our honeymoon. With the exception of a few work trips (mainly UK), the stamps are all due to trips with my wife. British Virgin Islands (Virgin Gorda, site of a beautiful resort), Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, France, Holland. And of course the Guatemala stamp for our adoption.

So what will passport 3 be? Hopefully it will be as fun as the first two…