Ireland, Rewind to the Fecking Beginning

FUDGE! Only I don't mean fudge. I mean THE Word. The queen mother of dirty words... That's not really a bad way to start a post on Ireland as it is a fairly common word in the Irish vocabulary -- The real dirty word I mean, not "fudge". However, I didn't intend on scaring away those with sensitive ears right off the bat. The thing is, though, I lost my little notebook that I carried around hundreds  of miles around the Emerald Isle taking notes of the things we did that day and little observations. That's part of the reason that I am so late in getting around to finally writing more about Ireland than just the adventure that we had in getting back. Procrastination due to anxiety, stress, and depression play into it too. I'm clawing my way back to some normalcy just by starting on this. A friend sent me a quote about just getting started and then everything falls into place or some such thing. The quote's around here somewhere; I just can't find it at the moment.

Anyway, I figure I can piece together what we actually did each day based on the photos that I have and that my mom and Jen took. (My mother was a photo taking MACHINE... which i guess would make her a camera. Hm.) I will probably lose some of the little observations that I had written down, though what is going to stick with me are the little memories that I still have stuck with me. Maybe those will do. Or maybe the photos will evoke some little thoughts as well. I'm not sure. There were just little things, like thinking it was sort of funny how Trinity College had sweatshirts the sort that fans would wear to a football game. Maybe fans do stop in the university bookstore to buy some apparel before rugby matches or quidditch tournaments or whatever they play on a Saturday afternoon.

So I know that we landed in Dublin. Yeah, that much I am certain of.. but I need to rewind. Our flight from Orlando to Washington Dulles was delayed by almost an hour. We ate dinner at MCO. I had a hazy IPA, which was my first alcoholic drink in 171 days. I need to write a completely separate post on drinking during this vacation. It's a complicated feeling, even now after we are done and back home. Then I had a Sam Adams Hazy IPA NA (non-alcoholic), which was really pretty good. Less hoppy than the IPA I had just had (sorry, I didn't take notes on what brewery that first one was from).

Okay, so the flight from Orlando to Dulles was fairly uneventful. I don't remember what I did on the flight and don't have my scuzzy little notebook. Do people still use the word "scuzzy"? The plane got  to the gate in Dulles, though just as the flight from Dulles to Dublin was supposed to be taking off. They held that flight, though, as there were apparently enough of us trying to make that connection. Besides myself, Jen, Mom, and Mike, there was another couple that was in our group coming from Cape Canaveral. Plus I think there were three or four others. Also, I had Usain Bolt's brother pushing my wheelchair. I've never gotten through an airport so quickly. So thankfully we all made the flight to Ireland, plus Jen had worked it that we had a ton of extra leg room, you know, for my booted leg and all. (If you are just joining us, I made either the courageous or insane decision to have lapiplasty done to correct the bunion on my right foot a couple months before leaving for Ireland. The initial surgery got pushed out due to me getting Covid over the holidays, so at this point I was just six weeks out from surgery and had just been put into a walking boot rather than a full cast. I was still on crutches, though.)

I do remember what I did on the flight from the U.S. to Ireland. I slept. However, I really didn't even sleep all that much because the in-air entertainment had the show "What We Do in the Shadows". I honestly don't know what prompted me to decide to watch it. I think the one beer in Orlando must have gone to my head because I was laughing out loud at this ridiculous vampire comedy. Laughing out loud with headphones in on a full plane. I believe I binged the full season. And haven't watched another episode since.

I really thought that being away from work and doing a lot of travelling from place to place would afford me a lot of time to get caught up on all the reading that I've been meaning to do. If you plan on following my series of blog posts regarding this trip, notice just how often I mention reading a book. Compare this with the number of times I mention watching rugby or playing video games on my tablet or staring vacantly out a window. Compare the number of books I mention finishing to the number of bookstores I stop in and number of books I mention buying!

Anyway, we made it to Dublin without the plane crashing or even losing an engine. All the way across the Atlantic Ocean with zero engine failures. Tied a record.

Ireland, Arseways

This is going to be my first blog post of probably a number of them about our Ireland trip. I am doing this in a backwards fashion I suppose because I am starting off with how we got back home, which was its own adventure. It isn't exactly an adventure in the Robert Louis Stevenson novel kind of way, so this comes with no warranty on just how adventurous or entertaining you, dear reader, might find it. As always, I write these blog posts primarily to remind myself of what occurred in the past as my memory begins to play tricks on me and secondarily to amuse my mother and my wife. Hopefully there are enough little tidbits of information or amusement to satisfy the rest of you.

I should also add that I began this post on March 21st and then wrote the rest over the next week or so. It hasn't really been edited for consistency. You'll have to put up with that as well, but I believe in you, reader; you'll manage.

We got back from Ireland late last night. I have a lot of catching up to do, and not just with my writing here. There is so much to catch up on at work! I got through last week's emails just now. Honestly I can barely keep my eyes open at the moment. I think I may need to continue this tomorrow. Maybe I can see just how much of yesterday's travels I can get down here.

We started off by waking up at like 4:45 AM Dublin time. That is UTC time. Here in Florida we are on UTC -4 right now. So, that would have been 12:45AM here. Got the bus in front of the hotel at 5:30 AM and were at the airport just before 6. We were trying to make the same flight as Mom and Mike that was leaving around 9:30 AM I think. That one was through Newark. We were banking on people not making because of Covid, and I think that some people didn't but the flight was way oversold and there was a long standby list. So, we didn't make the flight. The thing is, there is a US Customs pre-approval in Dublin. You go through regular airport security, and then you wait to go through another security line to go through U.S. Customs on that side. That way you don't need to go through customs once you land in the U.S. Sounds great in theory

The problem occurs when you don't make the flight on standby. Then you are no longer cleared to be what is considered under U.S. control. Practically like being on U.S. soil once you've cleared Customs. You're only cleared for that one flight, though. Once you miss that flight you need to leave and go all the way back out to ticketing. Then you get new security documents to go back through regular security, back through double-secret security, and back through Customs again.

The interesting thing is Jen had "SSSS" on her document the first time through but not the second time through. Apparently 4 S's means you are flagged for extra security measures. So she got an extra pat down and had her luggage searched the first time going through security but not the second time. I don't know what she did to get the flag, but there is now probably an FBI file in Washington on my wife.

I am still in the walking boot and on crutches from my foot surgery. (Honestly, i really feel like at this point I could just lose the crutches, but it wasn't like I was going to leave them in Ireland anyway.) So I also had a wheelchair through the airport. That probably saved us, because by the time we went back out, the regular airport security was tremendously long, and security to Customs had at least doubled. I don't think we would have made the Aer Lingus flight we ended up taking to Boston.

Why Boston, you ask? Simply because it got us back into the States. There is still a Covid mandate that to return to the U.S. you need a negative Covid test administered no longer than a day before your flight. You could possibly do one the day of the flight because results are guaranteed inside an hour (Mine took a good 40 minutes.), but when you are getting the first flight out in the morning it really isn't possible. Plus you need to schedule the appointment ahead of time. It isn't something you can really leave to the last minute. Not to mention, what do you do if you test positive? And this is what happened to 4 of those 15 other people travelling with Jen and I on this tour. A fifth had tested positive earlier in the week, unbeknownst to the rest of us. That's an entirely different story. Anyway, Mom, Mike, Jen and I were all negative and getting the Hell out of Dodge.

That whole mandate is yet another thing working against travelling standby you see. There was a direct Aer Lingus flight to Orlando on Tuesday, but that would have meant having to retest on Monday. Even being bumped to a flight on Monday would have meant having to reschedule a test for that same day on Sunday. Then there was the fact that 5 of 17 of the group had tested positive meaning the rest of us probably had at least some of the virus swimming around, and Jen and I did NOT want to run the risk of coming up positive and being caught in Dublin for another week.

I would definitely fly Aer Lingus again. They, like everyone else in Ireland, were extremely friendly. We also bribed the crew with $5 Starbucks cards. I cannot recommend this approach enough. You do have to know just how many flight attendants are working a flight or just make sure that you have plenty of cards onhand. This will usually get you free drinks if you want them. It will at least get you the full can of Coke rather than the little glass of it. Anyway...

So we land in Boston in terminal C. There is a Southwest flight going to Baltimore in roughly an hour from when we landed. Why Baltimore, you ask? From Baltimore there is a Southwest flight to Orlando with seats available. You can't go from terminal C to terminals A or B in Boston's Logan Airport without going out of the secure zone. I again had a wheelchair pusher available when we deplaned, so that was fortunate again. This walking boot definitely proved to be a wise investment!

Let me say that while we definitely took as much advantage of me being in the wheelchair as possible, it wasn't like I could have easily managed getting through the airport without it. I can't go very far in the boot without crutches, and with the crutches I can't manage hauling my rollerbag. I was relying on Jen pulling both our bags when we couldn't put those on the wheelchair. And there were some very long distances through some of these airports including through Logan.

I'm trying to think of when and how we got cleared in Boston. We DID need to go back through security once we got to the B terminal. There was only a few seats open for the flight to Baltimore. I sat in my wheelchair for a bit, so that must have been when Jen got us cleared as well as saying we needed the extra leg room for my leg, so we got the bulkhead for the flight from Boston to Baltimore.

Well, at least we have made it to Baltimore now! But there are no seats available on this next flight. So we waited like you do when you are on standby like this.

A few minutes before the door was supposed to close on the flight, someone asked the operations agent (that person who scans your ticket as you board the flight) if she was set, as in were there any more to come. She said no she still was missing some people. (YAY) Just then two guys come running up. (BOO) One guy got on but the other got turned away, as it looks like he was sent over from a flight he missed, but didn't have a boarding pass yet. (YAY) Then 3 college-aged girls who had been sitting in the boarding area all along I think finally realize they are about to miss their plan and come hustling over in their sweats and bedroom slippers still looking at their phones (BOO) Then they start telling the ops agent that their friend is still coming and yelling, "Alicia, they're going to close the door!" Alicia comes shuffling over in her slippers with her backpack and pillow and enormous cup of what used to be Dunkin coffee before she dumped a pint of milk and six sugars into it. (BOOO!)

The ops agent closed the doors to the jet bridge with two open seats (YAY!) So I was cleared to get on. Jen had taken "fourth" for the flight (with the provision that I got on). Fourth means that she would fly in the jump seat and could act as needed as a fourth flight attendant on the flight. That also means no alcohol for her (not that we were having drinks coming back at this point) and no watching movies for her. There were only two seats open on the flight. One was in the first row at the bulkhead again. A middle seat, of course, wedged between a slightly larger than average woman in the aisle and a much larger than average man in the window seat. Jen informed me later that of the two seats, I got the better deal as the other was way at the back wedged next to an even larger man. One other man, well a boy really because he looked to be in his 20s and possibly could have been the young man who was originally turned back by the ops agent, boarded behind me. I guess he got that back seat.

I'm pretty much fine at this point being wedged into a middle seat. Hey, I'm flying for free! Anyway, it got me where I needed to be.

It was nice being back in Florida. It is really always nice being back in Florida. The weather in Ireland had been quintessentially Irish. In the upper 40s and lower 50s with wind and rain most days. So Orlando at 11 pm in the upper 60s felt fantastic.

I feel like that's about all that anyone cares to hear about and then some! So I've finally wrapped up getting back from Ireland. Now it's time to go back and actually get to the fun details of the trip itself. As they say in Ireland - I'm doing things arseways.