Doug Clark: Foreign travel is a breeze – just add money, phone and towel

A sense of moral duty compels me to issue the following travel advisory to anyone who is thinking of traveling soon to an exotic foreign land like, say, Canada or maybe Hillyard.

Drop whatever it is you are doing right now and go check the expiration date on your passport.

Unfortunately, the Clarks did not take this precautionary step.

As a result, our trip to Canada last week to see Grumpy Cat wound up costing us about the same as the sticker price on a new Land Rover.

And that was just the bill for my one night in the governor’s suite at Seattle’s fancy-pants Washington Athletic Club, but I’ll get to that later.

The tale really begins with the panicky feeling my lovely wife, Sherry, and I shared when we finally got around to digging out our passports and saw that they had curdled like expired dairy products.

A dire setback, indeed.

Unlike America’s highly porous southern border, where drug mules traipse back and forth with winking regularity, our flannel-clad neighbors to the North have tight sphincters when it comes to who they want crossing into that wonderland of curling and beer.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that, due to time constraints, we couldn’t get the enhanced driver’s licenses, which also work for going Canadian.

Sadly, our options boiled down to:

A. Dig a tunnel and sneak into Canada.

B. Send Doug on a Thursday mission to purchase passports at the federal McPassport Emporium in Seattle and then join Sherry in Bellingham on Friday.

Many of you probably didn’t know that the government had a McPassport Emporium in Seattle, but it’s true.

You can get your passport renewed there in one day.

The only catch is that you must have all your paperwork filled out to a “T” along with properly sized head-shot photographs.

Oh, and don’t forget your wheelbarrow full of cash.

One-day McPassports don’t come cheap, not that we were complaining. People who don’t check expiration dates automatically lose their whining privileges.

The good news is that I married a woman who knows how to get things done.

So while I watched TV, Sherry got all the requisite paperwork filled out and even set up a makeshift photo studio in our bathroom by hanging a white towel over the door for the background.

Then we took turns snapping iPhone photos of each other, which is not to be confused with those Jennifer Lawrence photographs that have been circulating around the Internet lately.

Ours were wholesome facial portraits you’d see on a motor vehicle license, only not quite as good.

“I don’t think they’ll accept these,” worried Sherry.

“That’s the spirit!” I yelled encouragingly from the den.

So one week ago today, I awoke at 4 a.m., took a plane to Seattle and somehow managed to make it to the McPassport shop by 8 a.m.

I know. I’m as amazed as you are.

Within a half-hour, I had submitted all of our documents to a nice woman behind a glass counter who, much to my shock, approved everything, including our homemade photographs.

“Your passports will be ready at 2 p.m.,” she said, after I handed her a check large enough for a ransom payment.

Mission accomplished, I started walking to the hotel district to find a room.

About a block into my journey, I began to recall the words I had uttered to Sherry when she volunteered to look online for hotels.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “It’s Thursday in Seattle. There’ll be rooms galore.”

As I walked, I began to notice that practically everyone in Seattle was dressed up in blue-and-garish-green Seahawks garb.

Uh-oh.

Being a perennially sad Miami Dolphins fan, I had overlooked the fact that Seattle – the defending Super Bowl champs – was playing its home season opener on this very Thursday night against the cheese-head Packers.

Which is why I spent the next hour or so pulling my suitcase into hotel lobbies and amassing strikeouts faster than Randy Johnson.

Monaco. Hilton. Sheraton …

“So sorry. Nothing’s available because of tonight’s game.”

Aw, bite me.

My 4 a.m. wakeup was turning me into a groggy fog. Or a froggy grog. I can’t remember which.

I saw myself soon becoming part of Seattle’s crazed riffraff, yelling, “I’m sleepless in Seattle!!!” at the cars passing …

Wait a second.

Across the street stood the Washington Athletic Club, that grand old bastion for the hoity and the toity.

A memory prickle reminded me of some reciprocal agreement that the WAC had with the Spokane Club, which I had to join years ago when it bought the tennis courts where I play.

I am part of the hoity and toity, dammit, and it was time to cash in.

I called the WAC. Sure enough, I wasn’t hallucinating. There really is a reciprocal agreement.

And best of all …

THEY HAD A ROOM!

“The governor’s suite is available,” the voice told me.

“Uh, and how much does that go for?” I asked nervously.

The voice quoted a figure that, I believe, was fairly close to the Seahawks travel budget.

After I pleaded for mercy, he lowered the figure to Wazzu’s travel budget.

“I’ll take it!” I snapped, a drowning man grabbing for a rope.

Well, not without a letter, the voice continued.

A letter?

That’s right. According to snobby club protocol, the Spokane Club needed to fax the Washington Athletic Club some sort of letter of introduction about me.

“Oh, gawd,” I thought. “If they tell the truth I’ll never get a room.”

By afternoon, however, everything was settled.

I had my passports. The WAC had its letter.

I stood at the front desk receiving the key that would let me into the kingdom: 1,000 square feet of luxury with a living room, wall art, soaker tub and this giant TV that rises out of the foot of the king-size bed at the touch of a button.

The governor’s suite.

“I sure hope the governor doesn’t sleep commando,” I quipped to the polite man standing behind the desk.

He laughed politely. I think he was just humoring the sleepy rube from Spokane.