Day 6 - Fort Smith, AR to Memphis, TN

Day 6 was an adventure of a different sort. We had to start the day by going to the post office to re-submit my application for a PO box (in the shuffle, I managed to misplace the one already stamped by the post office in Alameda).  The process is fill out the application, have any USPS office check my ID and stamp it, and then fax it to the post office in Lewiston, NY, where the box will be.  When I did this in Alameda last week, it took four minutes.

In Fort Smith, I kept being told "no, you have to go online to do that." I couldn't get them to understand I already have done the online portion, and paid for it, but that they needed to look at my ID (for security reasons, the PO box number can't be assigned until a postal employee acknowledges that I am a human being with valid US-issued ID). They insisted that only the post office in Lewiston could approve the ID. Finally, I gave up and we ran to a major post office in Little Rock, where they were happy to help me and understood what needed to be done, and we were in and out in under five minutes, including time spent waiting in line. (In all fairness, Beth did volunteer that she "speaks Southern" and offered to translate for me at Fort Smith, but I decided a major city post office rather than a rural one would be preferable.)

Then, we headed to Memphis to meet up with TeKay, a mere 286 miles in one day. We knew it was going to be a shorter day because we planned to break in Memphis no matter what time we got there - he's the only person we knew for sure we were going to visit on the road, the three of us worked together for too long to pass up the chance.

Since he was in rehearsal, we took that time to go to Kinko's, fax the signed application to the NY post office, call the border of choice to confirm their fax number to start the process on the car, and hit the tear-inducing episode that was the sum total of the blog I put up last night.

Watching the cats climb was a hoot. :)

We met up with TeKay, went for a lovely dinner and chatted for hours. The three of us were the editors of the Contemporary A cappella News together (Beth was Editor, I was Managing Editor and TeKay was Assistant Editor) for a number of years, but it's been about eight years since we've all been in the same room, and it was just like old times.

We retired to TeKay's adorable apartment, I bonded with his cats (in preparation for my new home in Toronto, which also has multiple cats), and then we went to sleep early because Day 7 was going to begin our madcap run to the border, and was going to involve many long hours of driving.

We have finally decided on what our route north will be - the shortest possible, straight up through Kentucky and Ohio, to get to the border to present the paperwork in person as fast as possible. Once there, the three-day window for getting approval on the car starts, and we have other plans for those three days that will be posted once we know more.