a second passport in a hurry

We probably shouldn't have waited until the month before we left to decide we should each get a second passport, but we did.  Based on a tip from The World Effect we thought it would be helpful when trying to get some of our African countries and Brazil visas while on the road. It would allow us to send off one passport and keeping one with us. We were also concerned that we were going to run out of pages in our current passport, it only has a few countries in it right now, but based on the fact that visas take up a page and most require you to have 2 blank pages we didn't want to take any chances of not being allowed into a country.  However like I said we were about a month away from leaving and didn't have one.  So after some research we found that we could apply in person at a Passport Agency and luckily there was one in Denver.

After making an appointment, proving we needed to apply for visas in the next 4 weeks and had a need for a second passport we were issued one. We went in on a Friday and were able to pick up our passports the next Wednesday.  The fee was the same as if we did an expedited passport service, $170 ($110 + $60 for the rush) however we had our passport in about 3 business days rather than the normal 2-3 weeks it takes to mail it in.

So now we are all set and just completed our India visa application using our new passports.

keeping in touch

Since we are hoping to meet some great people along our travels we decided it would be fun to get some contact cards printed up so people could get a hold of us. From a great suggestion from a friend we used moo.com who have some mini cards (1/2 the size of regular cards) which are perfect for our needs.  The cards turned out really well, they are a great size and the quality is awesome.  Now let's just hope we meet some cool people to hand them out to!

Googleized

As we are planning we realize how much we are investing into Google for this trip.  For better (a great set of apps and great features) or worse (they have a lot of our info) Google has become a huge resource for this trip.  Here's the breakdown:

• Gmail - has become both of our primary email application, it's labeling and search has been great for finding all those confirmation emails and receipts
• Blogger - the site you're viewing now
• Google Docs - hosting spreadsheets of expenses and documents we might need on the road, shared between both of us
• Google Calendar - our trip schedule, shared between both of us
• Google Voice - we'll have to see how this works, but we'll be using Google Voice as our main contact number as well forwarding our phones to this number. This will allow a single place to check voicemails and the best part is Google Voice transcribes voicemails into text allowing us to either listen to them online or read the message without having to call stateside or miss important calls.  It also has great international calling rates for making calls overseas.
• Google - need some info, have a question, Google it!

So with all that I'd say Google knows more about us than our parents.