It’s been a long hard seven years of traveling together, but this week I determined that my passport is going to die young. With an expiration date in 2014 and extra pages already stapled into the center, my passport has been through a lot with me, numerous trips to doctor for vaccinations, crumpled in my back pocket in public transportation from Malaysia to Indonesia to Dakar to Istanbul, brief time apart at the the Indian, Russian, Vietnamese consulates. With each new destination another stamp and another border crossing, the Quetzal bird flying across the Guatemalan tourist visa and the postage stamp style visas in Egypt and Jordan.
Now, three years prior to its expiration date and just after getting two pages of Indian visas, there are precious few slots left in my road worn passport, just a few more possibilities before I’m due back at the post office. I certainly can’t get any more full page sticker visas, and if I travel conservatively I figure I’ve only got about six months left.
One way to conserve space though is at immigration on the way back into the United States. For American citizens it’s not a requirement to have each and every inbound border crossing stamped. As a result, page-stingy travelers like myself can politely ask the homeland security officer to not leave any ink. Those few remaining spots can mean one or two last trips squeezed out before the dreaded trip back