Saturday, April 15

Another dreary day in Lexington as we prepared to depart on our long-awaited trip to Ireland. One important order of business to take care of before we left--mailing in our federal income taxes. Oh well, better luck next year! At least we were able to leave the good old USA with a clear conscience.

Packing for a European holiday is an art. Nancy was clearly up to the task. Only one large suitcase (which contained another large suitcase inside it) and two smaller carry-ons. Some of the stuff belonged to Allie, which was fine, because that vacated space would allow us to bring back more than we came with. Don’t ask how heavy each of those bags was. Thank goodness the big suitcase had wheels.

We ended up leaving Lexington about 1:20 in the afternoon, only a few minutes later than my official timetable mandated. By 4:00 we were safely parked in Dulles Airport’s Green Lot. Unfortunately, our boarding passes had not been issued in advance, so we had to hang close to the gate for the next couple of hours hoping that our names would be called. Our big worry was that United had overbooked our flight, leaving us flat out of luck. While we sat there sweating it, several loud groups of high school students on their way to London surrounded us, apparently without a collective care in the world. Why should they be worried? If their group had a booking problem, some ADULT would certainly handle it for them. When our names were finally called and we were assigned seats, we breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Overseas flights are something else. Nancy and I had two lone seats by the windows unlike the rest of the herd, who were shoe-horned into the middle aisles. The truth is very little leg room comes with any of the “economy” seats. Of course, the gal sitting in front of me had to let her seat back all the way before we even left the ground, so my legs were painfully contorted every which way but loose for the next five or six hours. The flight featured a good selection of current movies like “Cider House Rules” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” That’s nice, if you like to watch movies on 6 x 6 inch screen that’s been slapped on the back of the seat in front of you. On the other hand there was food and drink, drink and food, and food and drink throughout the flight. It’s good that the crew kept us gainfully occupied, lest our minds dwell on the fact that we were actually flying high over the Big Drink.

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Created by Nancy and Dave Badertscher
badertn@rockbridge.net
May 7, 2000