The Ticketman Can

Conveying ourselves to Denver (Danielle driving, Taggat shotgun and Brandon sawing some previously neglected logs in the backseat) we were on task one (1) of our wayward venturings. Parked, we waltzed into Union Station with eagerness of receiving our rail passes. Nearly deserted, the voluminous station echoed with our gaiety and whimsy. However, the ticket counter too was vacant of personnel. So, we waited. Waited and waited. "We need our passes before 10:00PM." "Where is somebody?" Concerns of anxious customers grew like those of the Golden Ticket holders outside the gates of that mystical factory. "Oh, is that somebody who works here?" as a lone figure entered the vast hall. And like a wacky chocolate maker, he addressed us zanily with surprising wit and jocularity. Who can get our rail pass, tell a joke or two, give us the advice to make good times accrue?
Harold, like a warm-hearted mixture of Bill Cosby, Gene Wilder and Casey Jones, chatted us up with instruction, anecdotes about boarder crossings, drug busts and humour that sparked this trip's paradigm of meeting and talking to strangers you just can't get enough of. Harold, we salute you at this, our journey's debut and hope pull into your station and grab some breakfast with you upon its termination. What now, brown cow!


Casey Jones?
The Brave Engineer
For some train inspiration

Voila mon passport!

We planned. We organized. We networked. We packed. And we (mostly Taggart) searched, looked, , foraged, ransacked, rummaged, scoured, excavated, combed, and sought for his passport for nearly 4 hours. With plans to hit up Montreal on his first excursion to the Great White North, it was more than necessary. Especially considering the policy change for US international human trafficking changed just yesterday. Apparently before June 1st one could hop back and forth across the United States' northern neighbor's borders with little difficultly presenting only a driver's license and a corresponding birth certificate. But after the aforementioned date a passport is paramount if one is to have any hope of returning to the Land of Liberty.
The search was a Herculean task starting at Taggart's parent's home. He chose this locale taking little or no thought that the his passport would be difficult to find. He simply thought that the passport was in the desk where he always kept it. So after calmly looking through the drawer and the desktop and coming up empty-handed, his mood not affected, he turned his search to he own place of residence thinking he must have moved it even though recollecting no such act.
He started becoming slightly perturbed just traveling from his parentals' homestead to his own being that the travel time alone is 20 to 25 minutes. This time he was hoping to use to start making quality blogs akin to the one which you are enjoying now. Continuing the search with the room in which he currently sleeps checking the obvious places-dresser, book bags, anything with pockets-ending with the same result as before, his perturbedness gave way to mild frustration and slight franticness. Not only did the passport not materialize at his home but now he had to return, once again, to the home of his childhood wasting another sitcoms length in travel but not nearly as funny as even the worst episode of "Parks and Recreations," which we all know is harder to sit through then a root canal on a half a baby aspirin.
By the time he returned to his parents home his eyes were a little crazier and his demeanor was... well... meaner. After ransacking the house, again searching the same places including his desk, he finds no hopes of seeing those crazy Canucks. His feelings taking over he quickly becomes frenetic, talking in incoherent mumbles to himself and pacing the floor. What course of action was left for him in his time of desperation? Pooling what sanity and level-headedness he still possessed he called his girlfriend, the lovely Danielle. (};b) She was able to calm him some and gave great support to the disheveled being now unrecognizable as our friend and colleague Taggart. She agreed to accompany the second search to his residence, also known as "The House Chris Bought" and "The Speakeasy."
Finding his room in the terrible state, he again combs for what might as well have been the Holy Grail. His hopes diminished to the size of an organelle and his frustration peaking with spells of anger, disbelief, and desperation he again scans tenaciously. He peers into anything with pockets. He opens everything with lids. He overturns everything with multiple sides. And once he does this he does it all over again. Finding naught, his hopes dashed to little microscopic bits, he sorrowfully take his leave and again makes the journey north to his parents. As he makes this sojourn, more slowly then those previous, he contemplates how he will break the news to his friend that they will not see the Great White North on this voyage.
No sooner did he arrive then he received a phone call. On the other end Brandon, with too much calm jubilation then poor Taggart could bare to hear, stated "You can only stay in Canada until the 14th of September." A little confused, Taggart entered to find Brandon holding his passport and his Mom telling him where she had fold it after mere seconds of looking. "Where was it?" you ask. Only in a place that he looked what felt like a thousand times and the place he thought it was all along, his desk. Then is concluded his search by throwing his keys to the ground and breaking his key fob.
So what I've been trying to say this whole time is keep your desk clean "ya filthy stinkin' animals!"