Ireland Part One of Part One: Two Planes, A Bus, And Air BN

 

I play Pokemon Go, something I am neither proud nor ashamed of. I feel like there is a stigma about us Pokemon Goers, but if I try to make that into a joke segment of this book it will hit with only a small crowd, so it’s not worth mentioning…much. But I will bring it up briefly because it is relevant to this portion of my book. There isn’t a wide enough audience to justify dedicating an entire chapter to it; very few readers would heartily guffaw from those jokes. So when we got to the airport I didn’t expect to run into my cousin and his wife, even though they were leaving Colorado to fly to D.C. on the same day we were. If both of our flights were out of some Podunk little airport in middle of nowheresville, sure. But in this case, it was D.I.A., or the Denver International Airport, for those unfamiliar with airport acronyms.

On a “slow” day, there are hundreds of flights and thousands of travelers. To get to your departure gate, you take an underground train to one of three concourses. So, with all that considered, it was rather bizarre that we got off the train and onto the escalator immediately behind my cousin and his wife. Here is where the Pokemon Go enters the story; after my husband noticed we were behind my cousin and we exchanged shocked pleasantries, my cousin asked us if we were there JUST to play Pokemon Go. I mean…we were definitely playing it, but the thought of someone going to DIA, a place which takes an hour drive to get to, SOLE LY to play a somewhat infantile game, would be a bit insane.

Anyhow, we parted ways at the top of the escalator to go to our gate. Quick sidenote; we decided to go to Chick-Fil-A, and there was legitimately a meal that cost $6.66. That one can’t be popular at a place that Is basically catholic or Christian cultish. Of course, that part of the menu was photographed. I mean, how difficult would it be to make the cost of the meal $6.67? Or $6.68? I honestly believe that if they added one cent to the meal price they would notice an uptick in purchases by their cult followers who would be opposed to a meal priced with the mark of the beast.

Mark of the beast! Oh NO!

Another hilarity to me was my husband going through security. While waiting for our bags to go through the scanner, he noticed that someone had attempted to bring a full sized tube of toothpaste that they had to discard and it was on the floor since they had poor aim and missed the trash. I asked who in their right mind would attempt to bring something like that through security since, as we all know, some super awesome terrorist decided to complicate liquid-airport security relations. I made a comment about that, and Zack saw it and said “well, maybe it is a bomb.” (Yeah, Crest EXPLOSIVE paste! Or, Crestsplosion!) I hung my head for a second. That’s like yelling fire in a crowded theater. There are some words you don’t say while going through airport security; bomb, explosives, weapon, stab, trafficking, stalking, “can’t believe that made it through,” etc. Thankfully, he didn’t say it too loudly.

See ya, Colorado!

Anyhow, let’s fast-forward to the gate and the first of two flights to Dublin. We boarded in group 2, which I guess is semi-elite and surprising due to our economy-priced tickets. Surprisingly, the plane was a three seat per side and four seat in the middle situation, which was odd for such a short flight but whatever. Maybe the plane had international plans after us, which would have been convenient if it were going to Dublin. We watched Napoleon Dynamite together during the flight, and man, that movie is fuckin’ hilarious no matter how many times you watch it. It is truly an underrated cinematic masterpiece.

We unintentionally timed the film perfectly to the duration of the flight. Mad skill right there. We landed in Dulles, Washington D.C., with the perfect amount of layover time. After we deplaned, we waited for my cousin and his wife, briefly said another of many goodbyes, and walked down the terminal to our gate. Basically right as we arrived, our second flight was boarding.

Adios Washington D.C.!

Ready with Our Passports!

I hate flying. I always have, and always will, despite having been on hundreds of planes. Turbulence freaks me out. I even have “there’s always turbulence” tattooed on my arm, lyrics from my friend’s song “Turbulence” (shout out, Lauren!). I lived with aerospace engineering students while I was earning my super-useful Spanish undergraduate degree and they explained it as the same as a car hitting a pothole, which didn’t ease my nerves at ALL. I mean, no metal object the size of any plane should be airborne. I don’t understand it and never will.

That’s why they serve you free alcohol on international flights! This time we watched 50 First Dates, for me for the millionth time, for Zack, I am unsure. I decided to go down a VERY deep rabbit hole regarding that movie. Skip the next paragraph if you have never seen it (because you live under a rock) and hate spoilers.

So the basic concept is that Henry Roth (Adam Sandler), a total playboy, falls for a woman, Lucy (Drew Barrymore), and later finds out that she has a memory-loss condition caused by a stray cow-induced car accident and can’t remember anything following the day before the accident. This in and of itself makes zero sense, because why wouldn’t she remember the hours of the day leading up to the crash? The neurologist she sees explains it as her slate being wiped clean every night. Honestly, just go watch the movie, her condition is so complex, and I am 99% sure fictional. However, Henry doesn’t have memory loss, and therefore grows to deeply love Lucy to the point he makes her a video (that’s how old this movie is) of their relationship so that every morning when she forgets his existence entirely, she can watch it and see the updated version of her life. He leaves the video for her to see right when she wakes up, and writes “good morning, Lucy!” in the hopes that she will play it immediately. You know what…I will make this topic an entire other blog later.

Fast forward a bit because I need to speed this thing up. It is our sixth day in Ireland, and in this story, we have not yet arrived.  

The plane landed, and despite glasses of free red wine at high altitude, some of which I spilled on myself due to intense turbulence, I barely slept. Thus, as you can surmise, I landed in the BEST mood imaginable (sarcasm; hard to do in written form) and booked it to customs (while Zack stopped to pick up a girly pink umbrella), which was thankfully, completely void of people. We breezed though, and Zack earned his first foreign passport stamp from Ireland. We rushed out with our backpacks and bought our bus tickets to Galway, another long leg of our journey. Not expecting rain, cows, sheep and horses along the road for those Irish bus trips means you’ve likely not been on one. While I tried desperately to get out of my funk and the one-track-minded idea of dropping our stuff at the first BNB, The Four Seasons (do those even exist in Ireland?) I seriously couldn’t. Thankfully, my husband is good at getting me out of those funks.

We invented a character named Ol’ Nan, who would somehow always find herself atop cliffs and falls off and as she fell would say in her “old Irish grandmother voice” “oh noooooooo” and then explode at the end. Nan’s character gets further formed the longer we were on our trip. More on that to come.

Too tired…forced smile…

True feelings.

During our honeymoon, it scarcely rained. In my previous trips to Ireland, it rained every moment of every day. In those experiences, I wondered how people kept any part of their clothing dry. There is usually wind as well; I’ve lost many a good umbrella to the wind blowing them inside out. Let’s take a moment of silence for the fallen soldiers (please continue reading once you have taken your moment of silence. I’ll wait.).

What felt like eight lifetimes later, we arrived at the Galway Coach Station and de-bussed (why is “deplane” a verb, but not “debus”?), then began the walk to our first BNB. Of course, the rain began pouring most aggressively right when I felt easiest to aggravate, so when I started questioning if we were going to right way, I was ready to explode (like ol’ Nan). We returned to the station to ask for directions, and it turned out we were going the right way, but it was farther up the road than I thought. With this new, irritating information, we continued the long, rainy walk to the Four Seasons Air BNB, our shoes and socks drenched despite the best efforts of our umbrellas. Upon checking in, we discovered that the second “B” would be an additional charge, which ended up being the case for many throughout the trip.

Sidebar time. Why even say BNB, fully aware that EVERYONE considers the second B of breakfast to be included in your booking? If you go to a hotel you don’t really expect the second B unless you specified you wanted breakfast included. If you go to a hostel and the B is included, it is crazy luck, or a banana and some instant coffee (which at a hostel is still luxury).

Okay so we got our antique-style room key, unlocked the door to room 4, dumped our stuff on the floor, and looked around. This was my first time in Ireland that I didn’t do “the hostel thing” the entire trip, so this small ensuite room with two twin beds and one queen or double, I am not sure, with a TV may as well have been Buckingham Palace. We debated what to do for a bit, for example whether or not to nap or try to quash jet lag from the get go. We lay down for a bit and turned on the TV for a bit. The channel on which we landed was for a children’s show in Gaelic, which we decided is a bizarre sounding language trying to shroud swear words and words like “Hitler” or “white supremacy.” That quickly became an inside joke. Of course, Gaelic is not a white-supremacist language. It won’t let me upload the video/s we took because I don’t to pay for blog extras, but here is one creepy example:

/https://youtu.be/uM8iMNinYdc?si=hZZh0yFuqwLR_34V

Then something caught my eye. THE SUN! When in Ireland, especially for short time periods, you RUN from wherever you are inside to go be in it and take pictures so you can pretend it is green at all times. So we went outside. We explored.

Blue Lawn Chair

Apparently, I care about lawn chairs.
I’ve always known that I typically give inanimate objects personalities and feelings. The “As-is” section at IKEA (what is with that name? There doesn’t need to be a hyphen between “as” and “is.” Also, if they are going to do that, why is “is” not capitalized?? Or is that their attempt at trying to be charming and show they are based in a place where English is not the first language?) depresses me like you couldn’t believe. Sad, friendless, broken items longing to be chosen by those passing through, often times dealing with the shoppers’ mockeries.
 
Okay, call me crazy. Whatever. I’ll accept it.
 
When last in Minnesota, I stayed with relatives who live in a house with a lovely backyard leading to a lake with a dock. One day during my trip, someone placed two blue plastic lawn chairs on the aforementioned dock. That evening (or maybe it was the next? It really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of this story) the weather took a turn for the worse; heavy winds, a deluge of rain, and a tornado of death, Wizard of Oz style (maybe I am being a bit dramatic…except for the wind). So, this torrential wind blew one of the two blue plastic lawn chairs into the lake.
 
There it sat, all day. I couldn’t help but think of the poor, abandoned lawn chair ending up like the items in IKEA’s “As-is” section (GAH! Just capitalize “is” and remove the hyphen!). All alone, insults from even the broken and discarded IKEA items pummeling it from all angles in Swedish, mocking the blue lawn chair for being a lame American item wanted by no one.
 
By the second day, the lake even decided it didn’t want Blue Lawn Chair in its waters and had pushed it to the most muck and algae-ridden part of the lake. Enough was enough. I stood up on the dock in my swimsuit and declared (to no one, but out loud) “I’m going in!” And in I went. I cannot adequately describe the revolting, stomach-churning feeling of swimming through and attempting to stand in the thick, mucus-like algae and who knows what else in which Blue Lawn Chair had ended up. All I can say is I felt submerged in some radioactive waste, surely full of disgusting parasites and leeches, conforming around my body, giving me some horrific super power like being able to pop my eyes out and juggle them. Absolutely purposeless except maybe as a weird party trick.
 
I grabbed Blue with one arm, determined to evade my demise as the eyeball juggler, but equally determined to get Blue (new nickname) back on the dock. The rigid plastic edges of the chair scraped my arms and legs, and I struggled to get Blue onto my back, carrying him (or her??) to safety like a drowning child. Eventually, I made my way back, thrust Blue onto the dock, and climbed up myself. I noticed cuts on my legs that later would be surrounded by bruises. But it was worth it to get Blue reacquainted with Other Blue Lawn Chair. I sighed with relief, proud of my efforts.
 
Then, the wind blew an innertube left on the dock into the lake. I declared, with less gusto and again to no one, “I’m going in.”

Delayed, Un-Delayed, Re-Delayed?

Wow. Let’s just talk about how things are going at the airport. Actually, I’ll just talk (type, rather) and you can listen. I’m currently standing at one of those charging stations to charge my iPad so I can write this blog (you’re welcome). I am waiting to board a plane to take me from San Diego back home to Denver. My flight was scheduled to leave at 1:25, and while en route to the airport, I got a text from Southwest saying my flight was delayed until 2:00. At least they apologized for the delay in the text. Thanks for that, Southwest. Your apology means the world to me. 

I didn’t have a bag to check, because I am just that smart, so I headed right to security. There were two lines; one for priority super special VIP types and the other line was for the remaining plebs. They were not clearly labeled by any stretch of the imagination, and there was not a soul in either line, so I picked one and walked up to the lone agent checking IDs and boarding passes. As I approached him, he informed me that I was in the wrong line and had to go back to the start for the Average Joe Non-VIP line. I turned around, rolled my eyes, walked back to the start and entered the other line. The only difference was that the non-VIP line was one of those winding lines where the ropes made me do about 20 switchbacks BY MYSELF, which led me to GUESS WHO!? The exact same dude. But this time it was somehow acceptable because I EARNED my way to security by waking through the winding rope. Gee thanks. 

After security, I arrived at the overcrowded gate where the sign informed me that the new departure time was 2:20. Super. This time, I didn’t even get an apologetic text from the airline. Ten minutes later, the screen updated to 2:30, and then I received the text about the prior delay to 2:20. Way to keep me posted in a timely manner, Southwest! As I began to accept my fate, when the screens changed back to the original departure time of 1:25, and someone announced that there was a gate change without announcing the new gate. Well, that was a first. I didn’t know it was possible to un-delay a flight. 

However, as I rushed to the line I asked another passenger why we weren’t boarding and he said that the agent at the desk said to ignore “all screens and announcements”and that we would be leaving at 2:20. So my flight went to delayed to more delayed to more delayed to back on time to delayed to the second delayed time. I’m so confused I’m just waiting for someone to tell me what to do. Oh but wait, I’m supposed to ignore what I’m told to do. The new mystery: will Marisa ever make it home? Well, there are worse places to be stranded...

There's No Place Like Home, There's No Place Like Home, There's No Place Like Home

On Wednesday I awoke feeling my absolute weakest physically, and completely drained emotionally.
I'll kick this blog off with a few more pictures from my trip:

My flight to Denver wasn't until 3:00, but expecting things to go wrong at the airport, I decided it would be best to get there four hours early. I packed up my bag Tetris style, checked out of the hotel, and hailed a taxi to the airport. It took about 20 minutes to get there. I made sure I had all of my belongings and then headed in. I glanced up at the list of departures, and I was so early that my flight wasn't even listed yet. In spite of my super early arrival, I was still able to check in and check my bag with United. I walked up to the self-service kiosk which asked me to insert my passport so it could fin my flight. Guess what? My pathetic temporary passport couldn't be read. I typed in my confirmation number instead and it pulled up my information. The next screen asked if I wanted to upgrade to first class for the low, low price of $768. Umm...no thanks. I checked the YES box when asked if I needed to check a bag, and then something poetically ironic happened- I had to pay $26 for the checked bag, and I had to pay with a credit card. I couldn't help but laugh- for the last ten days I needed only cash, and here I was, finishing out my trip, and now I needed a card.

I asked a United agent what to do, and he told me to walk to the additional services office on the other end of the airport. On my way there, I stopped at immigration services to show them my police report so I could get out of the country. See, in Mexico they give you a paper for immigration and you fill out the information on the top part and give it to the immigration officer and then you're expected to keep the bottom half until you depart Mexico. Of course, when my passport was stolen, so was that dumb piece of paper, which is why I needed to file a police report and bring it to the immigration services counter at the airport. I got that taken care of fairly quickly, and then went to the additional service counter for United. They let me pay cash to check the bag there, gave me my boarding pass, and I was off to security. 

I wish I had actually looked at my boarding pass before entering the security line because I shockingly ended up with TSA Pre, which is awesome because you don't have to take liquids out of your bag or take off your shoes and coats. It didn't matter much, however, since the line was pretty measly and took hardly any time to get through. In Mexico you don't have to take off your shoes which is SO nice. Once again, I accidentally left my knife in my carry-on and they let me get away with it. I felt SO secure knowing that...

So all of this, mishaps included, still left me with about three and a half hours before boarding. But I had made it through immigration; I was finally on the other side. Perhaps now, as the Argentinian man said, my nightmare had ended.

I decided I should get a smoothie to at least get something in my rumbling stomach. I got one of those insanely healthy green smoothies and my stomach instantly started to feel wonky. I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Naturally, there was a massive line of people and I am not the quietest vomiter so it was a great time, puking while tons of strangers listened in. Whatever, I'll never see them again. I sat, read, listened to music, eavesdropped on the quirky conversations of fellow travelers, and ran to the bathroom once more to hurl up the remaining smoothie. The time went by rather quickly- all of a sudden, it was time to board. I felt the corners of my mouth curl upwards as I realized what was happening. My steps were leading me to the plane that would take me back home after such a trying journey. I did the weird superstitious thing I do when flying and touched the outside of the plane, then stepped on board and found my seat. 

Thankfully, my seat neighbors were silent and didn't get up in my grill. I brought plenty to do on the plane but wasn't aware that to access their free entertainment, I would have needed to download the United app which I obviously didn't. I tried to sleep, but it was one of the "new and improved" planes which basically means the seats are substantially smaller and closer together, there are no TV screens, and my seat didn't go back at all. But I was still on a plane. A plane to Denver. So none of that mattered. 

I landed and headed to the kiosks you can use to scan your passport to get through immigration. Can you guess what happened when I tried to scan my fake looking emergency passport? It read it just fine. Just kidding, it said it couldn't read the document so I had to go downstairs to the old school immigration lines and actually interact with one of the officer. He was incredibly kind though and said he was sorry for what I went through on my trip and welcomed me home. Next was baggage claim, I had to wait awhile for my bag but it eventually made its way onto the conveyor and I grabbed it, told the customs guy I had nothing to declare, and the experience ended. 

One of my friends who was helping me back home while I was in Mexico came to pick me up (that's how you know who your friends are- the ones willing to give you rides to and from the airport) and we drove home, mostly in silence as I was simply drained and felt unable to speak. The sight of the mountains made me grin from ear to ear. I couldn't wait to get back to climbing. 

After this entire epic journey, I felt like Frodo after he (and Gollum, technically) destroyed the ring. I could only think of the scene where Frodo and Sam were lying on the side of Mount Doom as lava flowed around them and they couldn't even muster the strength to stand. 

Except it was just me. 

Now comes the end of my series, and I suppose it's expected of me to reflect on the trip. When I tell the shortest version of the story, most people ask me if I am officially disenchanted by travel, but that is simply not the case. I could take the perspective that my journey was a drawn out series of unfortunate events, but I refuse to take that negative viewpoint. Instead, I just think about the people who saved me. The people who helped me and if they hadn't, I might still be in Cuba or Mexico. It inspired me to have such kindness shown to me, especially by strangers, and motivated me to try to be a better person and help others in kind by paying it forward. I also look back and can now laugh at everything that went wrong. My experience was quite like an Oscar Wilde dark comedy; a comedy of errors which are my favorite type of literature. 

It's time for this blog series to come to an end. But before I do, I want to dedicate them to everyone who helped me, especially Josh, Joel, Greg, my parents, Argentinian guy, lady cop, and Lucy. Thank you for going above and beyond to get me back safe and sound, because there's no place like home.

Some Starbuck's fails from Mexico (this I expect in the States, but my name is Hispanic. You'd think they could get it right):

Bria means wind.