Monkeyhouse is heading to the Emerald Isle, and this time we
are dragging some friends (Triecia & Bobby) along. Ireland is a place I’ve always wanted to go –
there is something about the green, the cliffs, the rolling hills that seem so
alluring for a nature lover and a hiker.
And everything I’ve heard leads me to believe that Ireland generally
exceeds expectations. Triecia &
Bobby have been trying to schedule a vacation with us for several years and
somehow we managed to convince them that Ireland is the place to go.
Anyone who knows me is aware of my Type A vacation planning
itineraries. They consist of
spreadsheets with detailed minute by minute scheduling of where we will be, how
long it takes to get everywhere, and how long each activity is expected to take
– there is very little room for spontaneity because I am afraid of missing anything. I have been made fun of repeatedly for my
planning, but should we ever disappear on vacation, it will take less than 7
minutes to locate our bodies based on these detailed itineraries.
That being said, this vacation is a true departure from the
norm. We all had different ideas of
where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do – and as we started planning, we realized that it would be near impossible to select overnight accommodations
each night having no real idea of where we might end up on any given day. So, we booked our flights, a rental car, and
our first and last night hotel, and decided to wing it the rest of the
time. Our single point of failure will
be the internet. With internet, we will hopefully
find a roof over our heads. Without
internet, car camping for all.
Triecia and Bobby live in NW Indiana and were driving to our
house so we could all go to O’Hare together.
Triecia and I spent most of the day texting about what to pack. I warned her that there is a 50lb limit on
bags and was assured that she was just packing a "medium sized bag". It gave me pause when she asked if I was planning to wear the same clothes more than once. Um, yeah - I usually pick my clothes off the floor and if they pass the sniff test, they are usually good for a few wears! Her bag weighed in at 44.5 lbs while it was still in Indiana,
which made her happy, because she could add more shoes and maybe more
clothes. Which she did. Final bag weight at the airport – 48.9 lbs. Damon and I are getting a little bit better
with packing and came in at a combined duffle weight of 58lbs. I think our plan is to borrow clean clothes
from Triecia when ours start walking on their own.
Our flight took off on Thursday night about an hour late,
meaning we left a little after 10pm. My
plan was to immediately take a sleeping pill, put on my eye mask, noise
cancelling headset and my hoodie sweatshirt and crash for as many of the 8
hours as possible. All went well until
they turned the lights on the plane back on at 11pm to serve everyone
dinner? Seriously, dinner? It is the middle of the night! Lights stayed on until about midnight and
then I tried once again to fall asleep.
I can sleep darn near anywhere, with the exception of airplanes and unfortunately,
the sleeping pills never kicked in. So
when our plane started getting tossed around somewhere over Vancouver at 12:30,
I was wide awake and not a happy camper. Everyone else on the plane seemed oblivious to our near death bumps.
We spent the better part of the next 1.5 hours with me
clutching Damon for dear life while our plane took quite a few turbulent
hits. For some odd reason, it worries me
more when a flight is turbulent over water than it does over land. As if being over land is going to save us at
40,000 feet. I may fly for work nearly every week, but that does not mean I’m great at it. We finally got through the worst of it by about 2am and I tried, again, to fall asleep. I think I got in maybe one solid hour before the
breakfast cart came rolling up the aisle and the lights went on, waking
everyone. Luckily for the group,
everyone else got a few hours of sleep.
We landed at about 10:45am local time and went to pick our
rental car before heading to our first and only planned stop. The rental car guy looked at all of our
stuff, shook his head, and offered us an upgrade to a bigger car, and off we
went in our SUVan – there is ongoing debate as to whether it is an SUV or a
minivan.
No comments:
Post a Comment