Our Visit to Eire and Froggy Land

As many of you are aware, Melissa and I recently traveled to Ireland and France for 15 days, including travel time. This will be dominating my blogs for the probably the next month depending on how I feel, and how much I need to revise it, according to our faithful traveling companions Tonto and Silver (actually Megan, Bruce, Ben and Wendy). If any of you wish to comment on something else or have cancer related questions, feel free to ask them (the questions, not Megan, et al. :-)) .

Thursday, February 8, 2007
Travel Day

We arrive at Des Moines "International" Airport (I think they have one flight a week to Canada), at 10:15 a.m. We print out our boarding passes, check our luggage, and clear security by 11:00 a.m. Our flight doesn't leave until 12:15 p.m., so we adjourn to the bar for a drink. We board plane the plane and depart for Atlanta where we arrive at about 3:00 p.m. EST. The Atlanta airport is modern , but still cramped because of the incredibly narrow hallways and the volume of traffic. My head is throbbing and I'm already wondering how I'm going to make it through this trip. I've kind of worked out this unspoken deal with Melissa, that I don't "play the cancer card" unless it's fairly desperate circumstances. I tell Melissa to go ahead and do what she needs to in order to get us in to the private club. As it turns out, we don't need cancer at all, just $25 per person. All six of us gladly pay for it. Drinks with top shelf liquor are complimentary, conversation is subdued, and best of all, no cell phones. Worth every penny.

Rejuvenated, we board the plane for our 7:00 p.m. flight, then proceed to sit on the tarmac for nearly an hour. Bruce has the best line of the trip so far: "I've got the kind of baggage you can't check." Every time I'm ready to drift off, I'm awakened by Megan's cackles of laughter. 7 .5 mostly sleepless hours later (not necessarily all due to Megan), we touch down in Dublin, where it is 8:30 a.m. Friday local time.