Our Trip To Ireland

Because I forgot my journal on Tina's and my trip to Ireland and I happen to have a lap top with me and four hours to kill sitting in the airport, this seems to be a good time to start a blog. The purpose of this trip you ask, well if you didn't, I will tell you any way. Tina and I have made it thirty blissful years as a married couple and have raised five wonderful children, three being married and having equally wonderful spouses. My wife said I have to say that. Actually I probably would have anyway. We have two still at home. We have two grandsons on the way, and one lost dog (A story for another day). That pretty much rounds out our family. The two pregnent ones litterally.

The second reason for this trip is the fact that I served a church mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints in 1977 through 1979. This year there is a missionary reunion being held in Ireland. So that sounded kind of fun. Can't wait to see some of my old friends. Of course they may not still be friends since for the past 30+ years I have made no attemp to contact them. Of course as near as I can tell they have made no attempt to contact me either. I'll do my best to keep the heat on them. Maybe I'll tell them I have been looking everywhere for them. I wonder if lying at a missionary reunion is acceptable. School reunion maybe, but we should have our limits. This is somewhat church related. I could probably probably justify it in the category of not wanting to hurting any one's feelings.

Actually there is a third, and probably the most important reason for this trip. I loved the people in Ireland and I always hoped I could return someday to see if I can find any of them. The 30 year thing and the reunion were just good excuses to make it happen.

So here we go.

Our daughter Natalie, who has a wonderful husband named Jacob, not the same one mentioned in the bible, but maybe named after. Anyway, Natalie agreed to come stay at our house and watch Tanner and Sam (the two at home mentioned above) for the first week while we are gone. I probably forgot to mention we are going to Ireland for two weeks. The second week they will be traveling to Utah to attend EFY (Especially for Youth) at Brigham Young University. So we really only have to worry about what they will be doing for one week. Natalie is a professional house sitter in which she watched some rich folks three childern and seemed to do pretty good. They even took Natalie with them on their vacations. Tina and I figured with that resume we could trust her to do a good job. Plus the price was right. A tank of gas to get back home. If there are those out there thinking we are taking advantage of the situation, it is her brothers for crying out loud, so we felt the "tend for free" rule applied. And the fact that she will have this special opportunity to bond with her brothers, she should probably be paying us.

Anyway, where was I? Lets start with Monday, July 19th, 2010. The date (19th) is very important and I will explain it later. I worked all day and Tina and I headed to Utah in the evening. We planned to stay at Tina's parents for the night and then leave the car there and ride the shuttle from St. George Utah to Las Vagas Nevada where we would be flying out from. The ride to Utah was pretty uneventful, other than I notice when it got dark and the stars started to come out I was using an app on my phone which identifies the name of the star and it's location was off quite a ways. It was not a sleep loss issue or anything like that, but left me guessing on some of the planets I was trying to identify.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010. The big day has finally arrived. By 5:00 PM (PDT) tonight we will be traveling to Ireland. We were both pretty excited. We did plan to attend the temple this morning before leaving (hoping for a little extra insurance on the plane ride accross the ocean). Because of our shuttle leave time from St. George, we did not make it.

While we were there I called my mother and she reported that she had recked on her bicycle and broke her wrist and would be having surgery on Wednesday. We went over and visited with her for a while. She was in good spirits, but you could tell in some pain. We had a nice visit.


We had a good break on the shuttle trip to Las Vegas. They made a mistake and over booked the cheap shuttle and had to put us on the "Executive Shuttle" for the same cost of the regular shuttle. I considered this a good sign of how the trip was going to go. They even gave you a complemetry 4 oz. bottle of water. It went down pretty fast and I would have drank Tina's, but by the time I thought of it, I could see that she was madly shaking her's upside down trying to get a few more drops. Actually she was reading a book, and giving me the "don't even think of it" glare.

I have to confess that I am not a real world traveler and when it came to tipping the driver once we arrived in Las Vegas, I was unsure how much to give him. I had a five, but didn't feel he earned that much since he was driving to Las Vegas anyway. It wasn't like he went out of his way to get us there. Anyway, neither Tina nor I had anything less than a five dollar bill, so that is what I ended up giving him. He didn't respond with "wow, thanks for the big tip." So he was either speachless that I gave him so much or he felt shafted. I have made a mental note to carry 20 one dollar bills in my pocket when traveling. Especially in Las Vegas. No one here does anything without expecting something in return, usually in the form of green backs.

Once we arrived in Las Vegas we rushed to get checked in. Mainly to get rid of the heavy bags we were luging around. Remember when I said earlier that the date would be important? Well, this is where what the date of the week came into play. As we excitedly walk up to the check in counter and showed our passports to the attendent, he looked at them and checked our check in time and declared that the tickets were good, but not until tomorrow. What??? as Tina grabbed the reservations out of his hand. What day is it she ask. The 20th the clerk responded. Your tickets are not good until tomorrow. After some haggling about a small mistake of one day, we were told we could pay extra to go today. That would put us in London a day early with no flight to Ireland until the next day. Of course I stayed very calm about this small error and we tried to take the "bright side" approach. At least it was not off by a day earlier, which would have meant we would have missed our flight. To avoid the embarrassment in front of those standing in line behind us, I thought about saying, "Oh, we forgot some stuff, I'll go get it", and then never come back, or at least until the right day. Anyway here we were stuck in the airport a day early, gorrila weight lugguge and no transportation. I'm not sure this little setback is a change in luck from my original feeling of getting the luxury shuttle for the price of the cheap one.

We ended up getting on the internet and finding a Hotel that provided free shuttle service. The room was only 20 dollars, which was much cheaper than driving back to Utah. They also had a free breakfast. So being the tight wads we are, that is the option we took.

We stayed at the Palace Station. For eight bucks we could upgrade and stay in the tower part of the hotel, but since we were only staying long enought to get back to the airport, we did decided not. I figured I could use the extra eight dollars too tip everyone that needed tipping.

We decided since we had some time to kill, we would try and get to the Las Vegas temple. We checked on a cab and it was $35-40 dollars one away, and Tina thought that was to expensive. I reminded her that some people spend their life savings to get to the temple. She agreed, but still thought it was too expensive. I have an Aunt that lives here in Las Vegas and I figured I could call her and see if there was a cheaper alternative, like maybe she would come and get us. I did call her and we had a nice visit. I had to withstand the chastening of not calling her and staying at her place. Once we got through all that, she reported that the temple is closed for two weeks, to be cleaned. I'm sure Tina was inspired to not want to spend our life savings to attend a temple that is closed. I kidded with my Aunt, that we were debating on going to the Temle of go to the casino and gamble, and it look like we only had one choice since the temple was closed." (That is a joke, I would never gamble on anything.)



Wednesday, July 21, 2010 - Well the right day to go to Ireland has finally came. We had our free breakfast at the Hotel and took the shuttle back to the Airport. It is now 3:44, we are actually less than one hour from flying out so I need to run. You know how you get really worried when they announce the boarding will begin in less than one hour and you don't bust your way infront of everyone even though you have assigned seating. We are flying on a big Virgin Atlantic. On the side it says "The Wizzarding World of Harry Potter". I certainly hope the flight is more straight forward than some of the flights I seen him take in his moves.

Tina just came up to me and complained that a regular candy bar in the airport is $1.25. Highway robbery I tell you . Well if I'm going to beat all the old ladies to the front of the line, I better get going.

Believe it or not I just ran into one of my old missionary buddies, Elder Mills, in the Airport. I can't remember or probably never knew his first name. He is on the same flight that we are on, he has his wife and four of his children. I quickly ask him where he had been all these years and why he had not stayed in touch. As you can tell, I went in offensive right away, before he could ask me why I had not stayed in touch. He didn't seem to upset that we had not stayed in touch. Probably had a lot to do with that look on his face that he couldn't remember me.