I received an email in early October telling me that my passport would expire soon and inviting me to look into renewing it online. Much of the federal government had just been shut down, and I assumed that renewing anything it was involved with would be a foolish undertaking. I pretty much ignored the email. Then, as we entered November and the shutdown continued, a friend posted that he had just received his new passport about a week after applying online. So I gave it a go. Four to six weeks was quoted. The passport didn’t arrive in a week, but it did make it in slightly less than two. Pretty impressive.

This is my fifth, and most likely my last. Slightly blurred images of the previous four are at left. The dates are 1986, 1996, 2006, and 2016. All are low mileage. Diminishing hair is obvious, but in the actual passport books, diminishing something else is apparent. I have never been one to challenge a passport’s capacity, but that 1986 passport has 15 stamps spread over 7 pages. The 2016 passport has a single stamp.

That single stamp is unique. It is for a 2018 entry to Canada to reach the northern terminus of the Jefferson Highway, and is the only Canadian stamp in any of these four booklets. That is not because it was my only visit to Canada. Prior to June 1, 2009, Canada did not require passports for land travel from the USA. Even after that date, it seems they were not stamped. My 2006 passport has no stamps from anywhere, despite there being at least two documented post-2009 trips to Canada while it was in use.

There are two stamps in the 1996 passport. So the counts for the four retired passports are 15, 2, 0, and 1. Passport number one has five times as many stamps as the other three combined. Hair diminished gradually. Foreign travel plummeted.