Back to Planning and Spending Time Away!

in #hive-1063162 months ago

It has been a long time since I have planned to be away from here for more than just a weekend or a couple of days.

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As part of our upcoming trip to Oregon, I have really come to realize that I'm a bit out of practice. I guess distance travel is like most other things in the human experience: practice makes perfect, and if you don't keep practicing... well, you get a little rusty!

I'm typically not that keen on festivals and group events, preferring to enjoy nature by myself, but Mrs. Denmarkguy really wanted to go to this event so I'm going along, albeit mostly in the capacity of being her "plus one", and in my own capacity as being one of the handful of vendors allowed to attend the festival.

This will be a completely new crowd of people to whom I am going to be presenting my work. That part, at least, is kind of exciting! We have been told not to expect much, but I'm at least hoping we'll be able to cover the expense of going there.

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As regulars to these pages might remember, our beloved dog Daisy passed away some weeks back, and I will say that not having a dog does make it significantly easier to travel.

Certainly, we still have our cats, but the nice thing about cats is that they can manage pretty well if somebody just checks up on them once or twice a day, while a dog really needs somebody on hand to take it out on a regular basis.

Which isn't to say that I don't love dogs... they just require more maintenance.

Of course there's going to be more and more travel in our future, perhaps the most extended of which will be our planned trip back to my native Denmark next summer. That trip usually ends up being three weeks plus travel time there and travel time back, and in that particular case we will have to have somebody come and house sit.

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I'm definitely looking forward to visiting Denmark as it has been 10 years since we last went — due to COVID and assorted other things — and I particularly am looking forward to just being able to sit and not have the world clamoring for my attention for three weeks!

However, before I can go anywhere I will need to get my Danish passport renewed, which will require a trip to the Danish consulate in San Jose CA, so there is not only the time and cost of an out-of-state trip, but also the $350.00 charge to get a new Danish passport with all the modern day biometric features included.

Somehow, I can't help but feel like travel gets more and more complicated with every year that passes. Meanwhile, Big Brother seems to be watching...

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Maybe that's just something we need to get used to. Times are definitely changing!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your week!

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Created at 2024-07-02 01:57 PDT

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However, before I can go anywhere I will need to get my Danish passport renewed, which will require a trip to the Danish consulate in San Jose CA, so there is not only the time and cost of an out-of-state trip, but also the $350.00 charge to get a new Danish passport with all the modern day biometric features included.

Oh Cmon! How comes there is not a Danish consulate or embassy in the capital of the US of A so that you can renew your passport comfortably? Geezus!

Well, maybe apart of the one in the link above, you can also check out this one in Seattle:

Danish Consulate in Seattle:
6204 East Mercer Way
Mercer Island, WA 98040
Tel: + 1 206 230-0888
Fax: + 1 206 230-0888

Yes, that's the "Honorary Consul" in Seattle... which is just someone who solicits companies to do business in Denmark, hands out import/export trade brochures and such.

There's the embassy in Washington DC which is a 5 hour flight from here, and then the Consulate in Palo Alto (Silicon Valley) is the closest at about 2hr10min to either San Francisco or San Jose, California. Which means catching a morning flight, taking an Uber to the Consulate for my appointment, taking an Uber back the airport and flying back to Seattle. It used to be I'd get it taken care of in Sacramento, California but that office was reduced due to "budget cuts."