What’s that saying? Something about best laid plans and their tendency to dismantle? I’ve never put much stock in old phrases like that, but when your seven hour flight becomes a two day trek across country and continent, it suddenly gets a lot easier to find the logic in them.
Looking back on it now, sitting on my bed in my Dublin flat, cozy and comfortable and writing on more than four hours of sleep, I find it’s a simpler journey getting from the bad days to the good stories hidden within them. Especially considering just how marvelously precise my original plans were.
August 29th, 2021
Everything as I was leaving home was as it should be. Suitcases packed, backpack organized, my customs documents easily accessible and all accounted for. I bid farewell to my dog and my sister and afterwards my parents and I shuffled into our car, setting off for the hour and a half drive to the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania airport.
When we were within fifteen minutes of the place, though, torrents of rain appeared out of nowhere and plunged us into a world of grey. It was like we were in the most intense carwash ever created, the windshield hidden behind a solid curtain of water, our only visible focal points being the intermittent flash of a nearby car’s blinker as it penetrated through the gloom.
Like a prophet cursed, I asked half-jokingly, “Do you think my flight will be delayed?”
Fast forward two hours to when I was meant to take off. Then fast forward through four more hours of sitting stagnant on the tarmac.
Originally, I was meant to leave Pennsylvania around 6:00 p.m., heading for the O’Hare airport in Chicago, Illinois. From there, I would have had a connecting flight departing right around 7:45 p.m. to the airport in Dublin. Instead I left from Pittsburgh at around 10:20 p.m., ending up at O’Hare at almost midnight, and with my flight to Dublin already having been cancelled due to weather conditions.
At this point, stumbling incomprehensibly through the exit of my airplane and into the gates of O’Hare, I had already begun to resolve myself to sleeping on any flat surface I could discover in the main terminal. I found myself wandering down its extended hall and discovered a nice guitar-shaped bench. Perfect. I called my parents to tell them of my interesting situation and as I was about to bunch up my jacket for a pillow and settle in for the night, my mom made it clear that she vehemently rejected my- admittedly flawed- plan and began to research hotel rooms near me.
An Uber later and there I was, standing in a hotel lobby in a sleep-deprived daze, a mess of pilots and flight attendants from cancelled flights swarming the room and forming a sizable line to the front desk. I went to the back of the queue and began to wait.
August 30th, 2021
My room was booked, my name keyed into the registry. I approached the desk and gave the employee there my information, handing her my driver’s license at her request. With a smile, she gave me back my ID and informed me promptly, world-shatteringly, that there were apparently no rooms available to me. Not because of space, of course, as they had quite a bit of that, but because I, travel student they knew I was during the phone call registration process, was not 21 years of age. And, upon further research, this was an issue we found extended to all nearby hotels.
Well, almost all hotels.
There was one a few minutes away, available rooms and all, that admitted 19 and up. What makes this situation so incredibly ironic, dear reader, is that the date specified above is my birthday. I have now, at this point in the story, been 19 for only 20 minutes.
A cab was called, a ride was taken, and I found myself in one of the most beautiful hotels I have ever been in.
I got to my room exhausted but content, feeling a strange sense of adultness with the fact I would be spending my first night ever in a hotel room by myself. And isn’t that what traveling abroad is all about? Growing as a person, handling strange circumstances that straight up defenestrate you out of your comfort zone, and then having the pleasure of recounting them later as if you had total control of the situation the entire time? Because that was my case, of course. Definitely knew what I was doing, such an adult over here.
By the time I finally closed my eyes to sleep, the clock was reaching 2:00 a.m.
The rest of my birthday was not the most exciting. Really, the events of it could fit into one, slight long sentence, which you can read below.
I woke up (surprise), took the shuttle to the airport (accidentally scared the driver when he realized someone had actually gotten onto the tram), made it to the airport, met a really cool guy who worked for United Airlines and quoted The Office to me after reading my shirt (a Dwight Schrute tee; “Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica”), got confused for a minor by TSA (the lady literally called me over as sweetie, which was pretty sweet in itself, but also thought I was 13, so- fun), got through security, made it to my terminal, and then proceeded to wait around six hours for my gate to open.
This time there was no delay. The sun was shining and when it hit 6:55 p.m. they started calling us on board. At 7:45 p.m. we took off . . .
August 31st, 2021
. . . and at 9:00 a.m. Ireland time, Dublin spread out below me, we landed.
The Global Gator 