May 18/19, 2018 – Ireland – Days 1 & 2 – The Day of Near-Disasters

I’ve been planning the trip for some time now, just waiting for the right time to go for work. Typically work trips are a round trip ticket somewhere, time in one hotel, and back again… but I need to visit both our office in Cork, Ireland, and our office in Bangalore, India. With one being halfway to the other… why not do both in one trip? It took some coordination, waiting for the right time to make both work, but eventually the stars aligned, and I booked this trip just a little over two weeks ago to begin May 18^th.
For those familiar with the blog, you probably know I have been to India before, but Ireland is a new country for me (my sixteenth country!) and I’d be headed there first. In one big loop, I would fly from Denver to London (10 hours), London to Cork (1 hour), Cork to Amsterdam (2 Hours), Amsterdam to Bangalore (10 Hours), Bangalore to Frankfurt (9 Hours), and Frankfurt to Denver (10 Hours). I’d be doing this over a period of two weeks where I’m traveling every weekend for three weekends in a row. I know, it sounds crazy, but I was looking forward to it… at least everything except the flights. I’d booked a little too late to get good seats, and right now each of the flights mentioned above had me in middle seats, with no chance of upgrade (believe me, I’ve called!). Short of that, though, I’m staying in fancy hotels (more on that later), I’m going to enjoy some great food, and even better I’m going to get to meet some of the people that work for me whom I have never met face-to-face. I couldn’t ask for a better travel itinerary!
Interestingly, though, I hadn’t even left my house this trip before things started to go wrong.
On shorter trips, I’ll usually leave my car at the airport in Denver, but given how long I’d be out of the country I elected this time to take a car service to the airport (town cars cost about $6 less than a taxi for me, I live in this weird “close, but not too close” bubble to the airport).They were scheduled to pick me up about three hours early for my flight, depositing me at Denver International Airport with about two and a half hours to spare, relax, enjoy the United lounge, and mentally prepare for the flight. Well… the reserved time of 2:30 PM came and went, and I called them only to find out the driver who had been on his way to me was in some sort of accident. The owner of the service called the driver’s cell phone, and a police officer answered and promised everyone would be fine but said that the driver was on the way to the hospital due to the accident.
The owner, Jamal, was shaken on the phone. He told me he had to get to the hospital and he was so sorry, but he would order me an Uber and hoped my trip went well. We stayed in touch over the next 20 or so minutes as an Uber was arranged, got lost, found me, picked me up, and hopped onto the highway to the airport. By this time, I was 45 minutes behind schedule but still had nearly two hours of lead time before the flight took off. Typically, it takes about 30 minutes to get from my home to the airport using the highway, today it would take 75 due to traffic, accidents, and just bad timing against the end of the day for commuters.
I stepped out of my Uber at around 4:00 PM, still with a good 50 minutes before my flight would start boarding and walked to the United Economy check-in line… and then had to keep walking, and walking, and walking. The line was HUGE, stretching from the check-in desk down the hall, around the shops, and halfway again down the terminal. I hopped in line, it seemed to be moving quickly, and resigned myself to the idea that even though I’d planned to have some time to spare, I was likely going to miss my flight. The Uber driver had kept apologizing throughout our trip, commenting on how calm I was and how he would be very concerned if he thought he was about to miss a flight but said I seemed very relaxed about it and he couldn’t believe it compared to passengers who had screamed at him about being late to their flights.
“We’ll either make it, or we won’t…” I commented back, “if we make it, great! If we don’t make it, I’ll just take the next flight whenever that is, and I’m already in a terrible seat so getting rebooked might actually be an improvement!”. I’m pretty sure he still thinks I’m crazy, but I never worry about travel like this unless there is an event I absolutely must attend. Even then, I try to plan in days where if delays happen, I’m still able to be where I need without too much hassle. There is always another plan, always another route, and I believe that flexible mindset is part of what makes me enjoy travel so much. I’m never quite sure where I’m going to be from day to day, but I’ve set some rough plans that will either go my way, or they won’t!
I was surprised at how fast the check-in line moved, and even more surprised to learn that my tickets were missing my Known Traveler Number (KTN) that gives me TSA Pre-Check (I’ve joined Global Entry given the number of times I end up at a border during the year), so I wasn’t about to get streamlined through security (which I’d been watching during my time in the check-in line. It looked like a disaster time-wise). Looking at the clock as I walked to the security officer who was checking boarding passes, I had eleven minutes before my plane started boarding.
“Leave everything in your bag, take nothing out or off!” the guard called out on the line I chose. We either looked very harmless or they’d given up the pretense of the security theater since it’s worthless anyway and so many people were already running late (I’m pretty sure it’s the latter). I hit the terminal train with two minutes to spare, entered Terminal B at boarding time, and walked into my boarding group just as it was called. I hadn’t eaten, which I had planned to do. I hadn’t used the restroom, something I try hard to find time for before long flights to avoid airplane restrooms. I hadn’t relaxed, hadn’t prepped, hadn’t even taken out my carry-on items I like to have with me (book to read, headphones, etc.,). I boarded the plane, put my stuff overhead, found my seat (the wrong one at first due to the rows being staggered and me failing to read, but corrected it), and we were off.
Over the next ten hours, I wouldn’t really sleep. On both sides, they guys were friendly but each time someone walked past in either aisle I would get an elbow to the ribs (I’m a bigger guy, they weren’t doing it on purpose). I couldn’t lean against anything, the neck pillow wasn’t helping, and finally about the time I nodded off I was jolted awake, adrenaline rushing, with no idea why. I could have gotten up and gotten my headphones, but with nothing really in mind to listen to save for some podcasts I instead opted to watch movies with subtitles turned on within the plane’s system. This was a great idea, and after watching Jumanji, Gifted, one other one I’ve since blanked out, and about three-quarters of Black Panther, we landed in Heathrow/London.
I haven’t even mentioned yet that it was now the morning of May 19^th, 2018. I flew into London about four hours before the “Wedding of the Century”, where Prince Harry of the British royal family married Meghan Markle. While it did mean the flights were a mad-house (hence the middle seat), the airport was not for the most part. I had four hours to kill, but my day wasn’t done having random things go wrong yet. Standing at the border control lane, awaiting my turn with about thirty people in front of me, something started to go wrong.
First it was the agent asking again and again for a picture of a young boy who was crying and very angry at being made to look at the camera (someone needs to invest in sock puppets for border police at airports). No matter what they did, though, even after he calmed down, the picture wouldn’t “register his features” and positively identify him from his passport. The sole border patrol (which I’m sure I’m calling by the wrong name, but I’ll look up the British equivalent to the Border Patrol later) agent apologized, said he thought maybe there was something wrong, called his supervisor, and tried validating the mother instead. She stood in front of the camera… to the same result. The system wasn’t accepting anyone. The issue would cascade to three of five of the computers, and the next two people who were brought to help also couldn’t. The line would eventually take two and a half hours to clear. I’m lucky I had the four-hour layover or once again I would have missed my flight.

This left me just enough time to grab dinner (lunch?), my first meal since breakfast in Denver the day before (I don’t eat on planes, even in extreme circumstances). I stopped at an airport “pub” and had Bangers & Mash, and a lot of liquids to replenish from the long flight. I hopped over to my next flight, an hour-long Aer Lingus jump across to Ireland, and landed in Cork without issue.
I was surprised when my suitcase showed up with nothing wrong with it. I have all my clothes and items. My backpack did rip at some point during the day, so I’ll have to replace that this trip (probably tomorrow), nothing lost thankfully. I’m not sure if it was intentionally ripped or just gave in along the seam, but either way the only thing in the pocket was electrical cords and those remain where they were, so I wasn’t stolen from. I got a cab with ease, the driver extremely friendly and explaining all about Cork and the River Lee (I’ll go into this tomorrow after some more sleep). He told me that while I’m here this week there will be a historic vote on abortion and women’s access to them (it seems like Jen and I are always visiting for historic votes on top issue or another lately), and we drove by a demonstration that was blocking traffic across the bridge in the other direction.
I had noticed in Heathrow that I was getting tired, and it was getting worse as we arrived at my (very, very fancy) hotel, the Hayfield Manor Hotel. I was whisked from taxi to room, given an information overload on the gym, spa, two restaurants, and amenities. The room is amazing, a full-size bathtub that I’m strongly considering since I think it might fit my height for the first time in a long time, though I’ll admit the shower is a bit small for a man of my size. I couldn’t bend over if I wanted to, but I can angle around well. I took a shower to feel slightly human, considered going back out to the lobby to find somewhere to hang out… and made it as far as the bed before falling asleep. It’s 11:00 PM now, and I just woke up. So much for the instant adjustment… but luckily I feel as though I can go right back to sleep, so maybe tomorrow will just be slightly longer than average if I can get a few more hours in here. More to come, and I’ll be adding pictures tomorrow