“I’m sorry, Marcel,” came the shaky voice over my phone’s speaker, trembling like a ghostly echo from another world. “It seems that Sylvia, the coworker responsible for your work visa process, was suddenly transferred to another department in Oregon... yesterday. Unfortunately, none of the applications or documents she was supposed to file for your visa were ever submitted. Not only have all the deadlines passed, but—” here came the dagger twist, “—your tourist visa extension has also expired. You’re now, technically, illegally in the United States. So... sorry.”
The words hung in the air like the gloomy toll of a funeral bell, each one slicing through my brain with the precision of a paper shredder that had no mercy for human error—or, apparently, Sylvia. I stood frozen, clutching the phone as if it were the only thing tethering me to reality. My face turned the colour of old dishwater as I locked eyes with my wife, her expression a perfect mirror of my own horror.
It felt like standing in the middle of the road, paralysed, as a car hurtles toward you at full speed in reverse. Fight, flight, or freeze? Freeze. Definitely freeze. My world didn’t just crumble—it imploded. The rug had been yanked so violently from under me, I wasn’t even sure I’d hit the floor. I was suspended midair in an emotional whirlwind, a human piñata being battered by the blunt objects of disbelief, betrayal, and sheer, unrelenting dread.
Before my mind’s eye, scenes of enraged TSA dweebs flashed—armed with high-voltage tasers, machine guns, and enough heavy-duty zip ties to start an Amazon packing facility. They’d be relentlessly chasing me, bringing me down, throwing a black hood over my head, and tranquillising me. I’d wake up in some CIA black site in Serbia, tortured for information I didn’t have, then buried alive to rot with my secrets.
This wasn’t one of life’s plot twists. This was a plot demolition. My personal American dream wasn’t just crushed—it was ground into smouldering rubble, a heap of bureaucratic failure ignited by a Molotov cocktail of incompetence and indifference.
All was lost…
An opening excerpt from What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Chronicles of Chaos and Courage remains available here. The full book can be ordered here.
💀 Wyoming Saga, Part V: The Demise of an American Dream.💀
“We came for justice. We got frostbite, a deportation threat, and a masterclass in bureaucratic sabotage from an agency that thinks deer guts on the highway are a national emergency.”
This was Thermopolis, Wyoming—minus 40 degrees and dropping faster than our legal hopes. The USDA, clearly too busy scraping roadkill off asphalt, dumped our immigration case on the Utah Attorney General’s office. Enter Sylvia: a DEI-induced clerical Chernobyl who filed my visa paperwork like she was auditioning for kindergarten with a crayon, a blindfold, and a grudge.
She was so catastrophically unqualified they eventually kicked her out... just so she could go ruin a different department somewhere else.
And thus collapsed the dream. Wyoming Saga, Part V: The Demise of an American Dream.
What could possibly go wrong?
💀 South Pass Wyoming, January 2023 ❄️
South Pass, Wyoming — where Range Rovers die, truckers give up, and USDA directors disappear faster than funding for sanity.
We braved whiteout hell to meet “Dick,” the Utah USDA boss who ghosted like a guilty Simpsons extra. Heater: broken.
Morale: glacial. Outcome: deportation pending.
Quick pit stop on Wyoming’s South Pass — not for snacks, but to pray the Land Rover wouldn’t die in its sleep.
We left the engine running because we knew: if it stopped, so did we. British engineering meets Arctic survival in the world’s slowest, loudest farewell tour.
Salt Lake City, the holy headquarters of Smith’s snow-blessed bureaucracy.
We bunkered down with nothing but silence, frostbite, and the looming shadow of USDA incompetence. The Range Rover—plate 4991—slept under six inches of despair, idling toward the American dream’s autopsy.
Jackson Hole, WY — Elk antlers above, existential dread below.
This was the calm before the slow-motion collapse: USDA betrayal, vanishing employers, and a Range Rover with the emotional stability of a depressed badger. We took this picture just before we drove back to Thermopolis in solemn silence, contemplating whether to regroup, replan, or just strangle ourselves with an elk tendon and call it an artistic statement.
🔥 Grab the pre-edition of “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” and own the literary equivalent of a flaming survival log.
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