We’ve set a new record on how close can you get to leaving for Brazil before you receive your visa from the Brasilian Consulate.

Through a comedy of errors and mishaps, Paul’s visa, and the passport attached to it, is still in Miami while he is here in Wilmington. The interesting thing about is that they are supposed to both be at the same place when he boards the airplane tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m.

The number of scenarios we developed to resolve the standoff was nothing less than heroic. In the end, it has taken a Customs Broker from eastern Europe sending a Cuban refugee to a Brasilian Consulate in downtown Miami to rescue the above referenced passport and visa. It is now in the desk drawer of a stranger on NW 72nd Avenue on the outskirts of Miami.

Tomorrow it will be serendipitously passed to us on the curb of the Miami airport, with the dropoff being arranged via cellphone as soon as we touchdown in Miami, being traded for American funds in an envelope.

And they say that international travel has lost its flare…