| "I spent an hour filling out the form ..."
Maybe it's a good time to lighten up and tell sea stories. I applied for mine before the Port Everglades office was open so had to go to Miami. The online bit went very well, which was surprising. I managed to get an appointment about two weeks later and went down, waited in the trailers for about half and hour and then spent another half hour going through the processing. The girl said that since my MMD was recent (just renewed) the TWIC should be ready in less than 4 weeks.
A month later I hadn't heard anything so tried to check the status online. The website said I was not enrolled! Hour long wait on the phone to hear a young lady say "Oh, yeah, that part of the system isn't working very well and the cards are taking about 8 weeks now."
Four weeks later I get a call saying the card is ready. Drive down to Port of Miami to pick it up and find they have turned the free parking lot into a paid parking lot to take advantage of the TWIC business. I frowned at the lady and she let me park for free. The trailer was full of longshoremen and port cops picking up their cards. The longshore guys were cursing a blue streak at having to pay to park. Waited for a half hour then spent another 15 minutes while the lady breathed life into the card. Finally TWIC'ed!
Funny thing though, a friend tried to use his to get past the jackbootettes at FLL airport screening and they told him the card was not valid ID. Go figure.
I went down to Miami to visit a friend passing through on a containership, was on the ship's visitor list, had a TWIC and MMD but since it was late the Miami cops had the bridge blocked off to "keep out drug dealers" and no amount of talking would even get them to call port security or the gate to confirm my story. It looks like we will all be very safe and secure when we are locked in our cells each night.
Oh well, Lockheed made a few bucks off me anyway and I am sure they have bills to pay too.
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