The Flight

Of course I was still packing for the flight at 10pm or so the night before. I mean, how else do you get ready to leave the country for a few years…? In truth I was fairly well prepared and it wasn’t too difficult getting ready, though still nerve wracking. Lots and lots of deep breaths! I will come back around to packing for things I would have done differently.

Breathe.

Arriving at the airport I ran into my first small bump. I had packed an extra bag (the 3rd) and expected there to be a charge. What we didn’t expect was that instead of a $50 charge (I think Mariah was quoted this), it ended up being a $127 charge. It was probably $50 for in state flights and the $127 for international. This thought did not really make me feel better… At $50 for 50lb. it was a good deal, but at the larger cost, I think shipping some of these things would have been cheaper and I could have done without them for the immediate future. This is not to say I got everything I own in three bags. The rest was already going to have to be shipped later.

In any case, I paid the fee and moved on. Leaving Mariah at the security gate was quite hard, as you might expect, but we managed through it after a few tears (mostly mine) and I headed into the mix. It shouldn’t have been so hard, given the semi-short time period and the happy reasoning, but it was.

Some of you might know that along with my laptop I brought with me my Mac Mini (which is a small computer that measures about 10in x 10in x 4in high) and I am happy to report that I took it through security without difficulty. I had it wrapped in a towel in one of my carry on bags and just took it out into a bin at the scanner like you would with a laptop. No questions asked and I didn’t even manage to break it in the process (they are made of laptop parts, so I wasn’t too worried about its portability).

After that, it was just a matter of waiting and trying to get myself together (I was still reeling from having to leave my beautiful lady behind). I flew to Chicago from Portland and would leave for Dublin from there. Last March we flew through London on our way to Dublin and back, and had a bad experience with timing and security in doing that, so I was hoping to avoid the extra complication of traveling into a separate country and going through security multiple times. As it turns out, this time it was…different...but worse in a lot of ways. I had tickets for a completely separate flight on Aer Lingus from Chicago to Dublin, which meant I had to check in separately with Aer Lingus in Chicago. Once I figured out I had to go to a completely separate terminal for international flights (which seems to be the common for anything heading out of the country) I found my way to the Aer Lingus check-in desk.

The check-in went fine…except… It seems that Aer Lingus puts a weight restriction on carry-on items (6kg for the larger and 4kg for smaller). The US airlines restrict carry-on bags in size only (which makes quite a bit more sense to me, but…), so I had loaded up my carry-on with a few of my heavier and important objects. The weight restriction meant that I had to check my larger carry-on and shell out $100 for another excess checked bag. Before I checked it, I pulled out my Mac Mini and now got to carry it around, wrapped in a towel, in a plastic bag… This was stress that I could have done without…

I did have to go through security again, because in changing terminals I found myself now outside the security area. Fortunately, I again cruised on through security without any difficulties, aside from the general chaos of an international security station (somehow they just seem more frantic and stressful). Once through security I realized…there is almost no food available on the gate side. At the time I didn’t care because I just wanted to get through the stressful part and get on my way, but later I ended up eating part of a pre-made, plastic wrapped sandwich, which wasn’t so pleasant. Note to self: Eat before going through security…

Especially when you have a 3+ hour layover…

Beyond that, the flight from Chicago was actually very uneventful. We had almost no turbulence despite the very windy weather that Dublin was getting. This was an upgrade from our flight last March when we had a few patches of steady air with our turbulence, which made our plane jump and shout and dance an Irish jig. I dozed a little bit towards the end of the flight, but didn’t get any meaningful sleep (which is pretty typical for me). The in-flight movie was garbage (something with that girl from Mean Girls and only the one) on what looked like 80’s tube TV’s. This was a downgrade from our previous flight where we had seatback screens and a fairly extensive selection of flicks. Fortunately I had a few decent movies on my laptop, so I went that route. This flight had very few people, so with no one sitting next to me I was able to spread out a bit more. This I considered a plus, considering the size of your average coach airline seat.

Coming into Dublin early in the morning when it was still dark was quite nice (still dark at 7am amazingly enough). They use the orange (sodium based?) street lights that you can find in Springfield, and the city was beautiful stippled with thousands of these orange dots. Landing went fine and we were all funneled into the immigration lines. I got none of the questions that I expected from the immigration official. He pretty much said, “have a good stay,” and I was on my way (I had been told that I would have to show a lot of documentation proving I had health insurance, money, etc.).

On the flight I had done a few prayers, to whoever it is that regulates Karma, that my bags would actually come through and be in one piece (especially considering I paid well over the worth of half the items just to get them there). These seemed to work for me, because my bags were first out of the chute and I was on my way. It took a taxi ride to get down to where I am staying (the airport is in north Dublin and I am staying in South Dublin), which cost me a mean 52 Euro. The traffic of the morning definitely increased the fair, but it was well worth the price rather than lugging more bags than I could carry onto a bus or something of that sort.

I arrived at the house at around 9:00am Dublin time working on 20 hours awake and was ready to face the first day…


The moral of this story is: Make sure you know the baggage requirements and costs for all the airlines you are taking, or shipping is cheaper than checking, or just make sure your airlines are at least partnered (our first flight was United to London and then BMI, which is a partner to United, over to Dublin), so you can check in for the whole flight at the start (but make sure your layovers are longer than an hour, just there's a lag at security).