Prologue to The Epic Travels of Nick and Corey in South America, a Distant Land Inhabited by Kind People, Drug Dealers, Other Travelers, Buses, Boats, and Empanadas.

August 14, 2007: Nick sits at his computer and starts to complain about the situation. He is upstairs at Grampaw's house in Orange County, an insufferable expanse of freeways, exhaust fumes, and disgusting shows of affluence.

In the ides of March in Mammoth, I stepped out of the sunlight and into the tiled lobby of the post office to fill out the application for my passport. I racked my brain for my parents' maiden and middle names, I smiled for the two photos, and I handed in a notarized copy of my birth certificate.

"That'll do it," she said. "You know it will take ten to twelve weeks for processing and delivery." All right, thank you. Have a good day.

I left and promptly forgot about my passport for ten to twelve weeks. After three months I moved out of San Diego for the summer. I started to worry about where it would be sent. I waited a while longer, while the folks at the agency diligently printed out a simple book of paper with my picture in it. The passport agency website only explained that my application was being processed, the generic message said so. I hoped it would be forwarded to Mammoth from UCSD. I called Mom from Hawaii a few times. "Is it here yet, Momma?"

"No, no passport yet. Sorry honey. I'll keep checking." She kept checking, but it kept not coming. Eventually a letter arrived in Mammoth while I was gone. It had been forwarded from San Diego, adding a week long delay to the delivery. Inadequate birth certificate, it said in more words. Send in a better one. I sealed my original birth certificate and a typed letter in an envelope when I got back to California a few weeks later. The letter requested that the passport be mailed out to PO 7053 in Mammoth instead of San Diego because I was not there. It was a simple enough request, I daresay. The cost of sending that parcel to South Carolina to continue processing was twenty dollars from my pocket, twenty dollars to guarantee timely delivery and insurance on the envelope.

It got there a day or two late. I called the agency to make sure they changed the mailing address. The guy from Kentucky said it was still going to Gilman Drive he said, not Mammoth. I told him to change that, please, and he made a note of it.

One day there was a yellow card indicating a package. My heart leapt; maybe passports come in boxes. Alas, it was only proactive, and it wasn't even for me. Hope was futile, I decided.

I went camping with my family, knowing that it would be there in the box at the post office when we got back. No. I checked the following two days. I swung the metal door open only to find an empty space or every piece of mail imaginable, minus a US passport.

I went backpacking with Walluss for three days. It was a safe venture because I had received the Email, the heartwarming message from the passport agency: We have finished processing your application. It should arrive on 8/10/07, the very next day, according to their overnight delivery estimates. I spent the weekend backpacking and joking that hopefully I could go to Ecuador in a few days. My flight was scheduled for August 15.

No. The post office box was small and empty again. I called the agency and got a FedEx tracking number out of them. It was in San Diego, not Mammoth. They hadn't got my two requests- 1: Send it to Mammoth instead of San Diego, and 2: Make sure you send it to Mammoth, not San Diego. I'm glad they paid such careful attention.

I called FedEx to track the package, which they had supposedly sent out. FedEx told me to call the agency; the agency told me to call FedExI was ready for the trip. I had everything prepared, plane tickets, the pack, shoes, money, gear, clothes, Spanish… the only thing I was missing was the bloody booklet of paper, the government's printed permission for me to go abroad. That detail was the only thing that might hinder me.

I told FedEx to send it to Laguna Hills instead. Then I could get it there when I went to grandpa's house before I flew out from LAX. Six hours of pleasant desert driving from Mammoth brought be to that safe haven, the place I knew I could finally get my hands on that book of paper with embossed stamps and pictures of my face. FedEx tracking confirmed, however, that it had left San Diego, seemingly of its own accord. Returned to shipper was the fate displayed on the website; returned to the passport agency in South Carolina, at precisely the opposite side of the country. I did not entirely understand what that meant when I read it, so I called my good friends at FedEx.

"Yeah, it was in San Diego for four days. We couldn't deliver it to the address because you, the recipient, had moved. Is that correct?"

"Yes." But I had demanded that it be sent to Laguna Hills. They tried to send it to the school, whose offices had by now quit forwarding mail for the summer. "It was in San Diego yesterday, is there any chance it's still there?" I asked, my voice trembling with hope. I had those hope things again, just after my last ones had been demolished by the blundering stupidity of the people in charge of this operation. "Because if it's there in San Diego FedEx, I could come pick it up…"

"No, tracking shows that it was sent back to the shipper because it's not permitted to be forwarded to your mailing address."

"So is there anything else I can do at this point? You guys can't really track the package exactly now, can you? It just says it was sent back to the shipper, there's no detail about where it is… currently…"

"Well, it's really out of our hands now. You can call the passport agency about it, but it's already been shipped out of our facility."

"Ah. Well, thanks FedEx." I chuckled at the man on the phone. He sounded friendly enough. "Have a good day then." He was useless and he couldn't care at all for my situation because it wasn't his job. They had sent my passport to the other side of the country as soon as I had come close to the place where it was waiting for me. I was going to have to change my flight date now, which would double the original price of the tickets.

I waited for a while. There was really nobody to call now. Every chance of getting that booklet of paper in time seemed to have been shot down. A few hours later I called the passport office in South Carolina to see if those innumerate and nameless people had received the passport yet.

The lady on the phone was as hopeless as all before her. " Let me check my computer here," she told me. I heard her tapping computer keys. " Tracking says it's been shipped back to us," she continued, "but you should talk to FedEx about it because we can't locate it or reship it."

I was caught in the middle of this ridiculous situation. My passport was finally finished, but it was missing in purgatory. Alas, I talked to FedEx again, this time with a competent person in the San Diego facility. Her name was Helen, and what she told me was perplexing. "Oh yeah, we have that package. There was a mistake with the tracking… it's still here in San Diego."

I thanked her for finding it and asked if I could come from Orange County that same day to pick up my key document. They were closing in an hour, at seven, the day before my plane left for that foreign land. I wanted to get it immediately, so she said she would take the parcel off the truck so it would stay in San Diego. Shortly thereafter, my grandpa reminded me that we wouldn't make it in time. So I called her back, told her to send my godforsaken package up to Laguna Hills, and have it held at the FedEx facility in Irvine… which was located on the way to the airport.

I called Corey that evening, on the day before our flight to a foreign land. I told him my woes. "Dude," he replied, "why the f*** are you so sketchy all the time? It's always like 'Oh, can Nick come?' at the last minute?" I let out a nervous laugh.

The next morning my grandpa drove me and my backpack out towards the airport. We stopped at Irvine FedEx headquarters, who didn't open for another hour. I sat outside expecting my passport to be lost, in San Diego, or verily returned to South Carolina. I'll miss my flight. I'll tell Corey to wait for me a week in Ecuador.

The doors opened at the hand of gruff FedEx employees. I showed them my tracking number, and they handed me a stiff envelope. Goddamn you people. Finally!I got my passport at the last hour possible, and made it to the airport to check my luggage and board my plane. The blue booklet with my goofy photograph inside almost cost me a few thousand dollars and wasted week(s), and maybe it gave me a dozen ulcers from being so stressed. I had detested everyone I had talked with on the phone, trying to hunt down the elusive parcel I now had in my pocket.

Sometimes I think my luck never fails, I thought as I waited for a plane.