A day of Traveling: Ireland to Seattle
Total distance today: About 600 meters
But in fairness a lot had to go right to get those 600 meters in. Airports, 10 hour flight, no lost luggage or damaged bike in transit, no missing tools to put the bike back together again. So I take that as a win. I am kind of cheating tonight and staying in a motel. Will see how the jet lag is tomorrow morning before deciding on tomorrow’s plan.
An Uncle dropped me at the airport (Thank You!), and after some initial confusion on where to go with the bike and after taking the compulsory airport pic I joined the correct baggage queue. A couple of other cyclists lugging their own bikes were right behind me. They were off to cycle the alps for a couple of weeks
I got chatting to a elderly woman at the airport security who lives between London and Dublin. After she teased info about my cycle trip out of me, she insisted that she teach me some prayer to help me. I am not religious but I didn’t have the heart to tell her this so I found myself saying “I invoke the power of Christ to protect me in shining light.” Or something like that anyway… Though I am not religious, this was a nice gesture from a stranger to take a few minutes out of their day to wish me well.
Going through US immigration was an interesting experience. The immigration lady was very suspicious of me. But I suppose I can’t say I blame her. I would be suspicious of me too.
The flight was fairly uneventful. There were 2 elderly American men in the seat in front of me. They were drinking whiskey… And had 1 too many at that. So between oppenheimer scenes (no I hadn’t seen this, great movie) I would catch snippets of convos that are not for public consumption. But they did drink themselves to sleep by the time I got half way through tomb raider.
The bike arrived safe and I managed to put it together outside arrivals without incident. My Garmin will take some getting used to tho. I took a Wrong turn coming out of the airport and found myself on a highway type road that I definitely shouldn’t have been on. So just had to peddle on and take the first exit. And then my Garmin didn’t want to reroute. So end up half walking and half cycling to the motel with assistance from Google maps on the phone.
Tomorrow’s plan is tomorrow’s problem. For now… Bed.
