The 🍀UCK of the Irish

I’m sorry there are no L’s. Seamus, it’s your spin…

This is the story of how we got to Ireland… long before our luggage. But first, let me back up a few paces. My wife, Sarah, does a herculean amount of research before we go on trips. Like, down to the Nth detail.

So long before we even booked our flights, we checked in with SFO to make sure that A) our luggage would transfer and B) that we could get between gates without having to go through security a second time.

Spoiler alert, the people to whom we spoke were wrong on both accounts. And not like one guy named Phil behind a desk, but rather a virtual parade of well meaning, albeit woefully misinformed workers.

OK, so flash forward to the night before our trip, we did as any two people with a computer and who have left their zip code would do, and attempted to check in.

“You cannot check in online, please see gate attendant upon arrival”.

Not a great start, but serviceable. We decide to get to the Palm Springs airport 90 minutes early on a Tuesday afternoon. For the uninitiated, this isn’t a terribly busy airport. I’ve been the ONLY non TSA person in security on multiple occasions.

Despite that, we stick to the 90 minutes early plan and hey, we’re the only people checking bags. Off to a good start. We chat with… oh let’s call her Marge… a very cheerful lady who checks our bag and prints the first leg of our flight (Alaskan). That’s the good news! Now we have an actual boarding pass. The bad news? She can’t print our Aer Lingus boarding pass… I guess this is the first time anyone has ever had a connecting flight.

We’re trendsetters.

She assures us that we won’t have to go through security again and to just saunter up to the gate agent for a boarding pass. No. Big. Deal.

We get through security in about 4 minutes, and land at our gate… carry the one… 80 minutes before takeoff. I get a coffee, a sandwich, and eyeball our second gate attendant. I’ve got time, why not get double confirmation?

I speak with Marge #2, also very cheerful and also full of tales that we can simply mosey up to the gate agent and get our shiny new boarding pass. No. Big. Deal.

So we board in PSP feeling still somewhat skeptical (if you’ve ever been through SFO you’ll understand why) but we’ve now been told 3 times that we can get between gates without having to go through security again and that our bags will transfer. We arrived early. We called ahead. What more could we possibly have done at this point? (Well, not fly Aer Lingus, as it turns out)

We land at SFO with full bladders but decide… we should probably sort out the gate/ticket situation first. Guess what… we have to leave D to get to B and go through security again.

In order to get through security, you need a boarding pass. The gate agent, to whom we’ve been directed twice in the last 2 hours… is on the other side of security. So we jog out of B, follow signs through two parking garages and then stop at our first of 3 “information” desks (yep, those quotes are warranted). We’re told to go to our gate (B), but as it’s an international flight we need to go to check in… which is in A, not B.

“Oh, it’s just up there… not far at all”

🙃

We go up a few flights of stairs, down a very long hallway and burst into the international check in area which looks like the panning shot from the first time Will Smith gets a look inside MIB headquarters. Now we’re about 45 minutes from takeoff, still don’t have boarding passes, and haven’t gone through security.

Sarah is starting to visibly vibrate.

We run up and down all the check in areas… no Aer Lingus is to be found. We stop at our second “information” booth. This guys tells us “Aer Lingus is closed, you have to use a kiosk. If there’s no kiosk, then you miss your flight.”

Super helpful.

Finally we find the Aer Lingus area… it’s the very first one we passed. We missed it because they only have digital signs, but since they’re closed they’re all off… and best of all… they’re the ONLY airline in the ENTIRE airport that has no self check-in kiosks.

“Information” booth 3.

This woman, who for the record looked like a docent at a museum… kinda wearing a smock over street clothes and has the look about her like “I’m only here because I don’t know where else to be”. She explains that there are no Aer Lingus employees present because they’re only there when they have a flight… as if I was Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense and not actually standing in front of her talking about my Aer Lingus flight. She sees tired people.

Anyway.

She suggests we use the white courtesy phone to call Aer Lingus to “see if they can do something” because she can’t call a gate, look anything up, print things, or as it turns out… help in any way.

So I head to the phone while Sarah goes to plead with the security team to see if they’ll let us close enough to a person with a computer who also might exercise some logic. A tall order, but don’t mess with Sarah and her travel plans. Bad things will happen to you.

Meanwhile, I’m on the phone with a guy who I can neither hear nor understand. I start the conversation politely, but with clear urgency. “Hello, I’m at the SFO airport trying to board an Aer Lingus flight that I’m checked into but for which I have no boarding pass. Your airline will not let me check in online, there are no agents present, you have no kiosks, and my flight leaves in 40 minutes. I can’t go through security without a boarding pass. What can you do for me?”

Typing.

A bunch of questions I don’t have answers to.

My record is found.

Tell me again what your situation is.

My blood starts to boil, but kindly I repeat my story on 1.5x podcast mode.

A long pause.

“And this flight leaves on June 11th?”

As I’m just starting to get frustrated with him, because he clearly hasn’t picked up on the urgency or the basic math of “if a plane going towards Guinness leaves in 40 minutes and it’s 5:00 in the afternoon… how long do you have to speak with a customer support rep before he realizes the flight can only be for the same day in which he’s speaking to you”… I get a text message from Sarah.

She’s conned her way into security. I thank the agent and hang up on him. I don’t have enough time to give him closure.

We get up to the x-ray machine and Sarah is now visibly registering as two people she’s vibrating so hard. The ABSURDLY slow moving TSA agent who keeps telling us “oh, you’ve got plenty of time” is not helping our nerves.

After what feels like an eternity, both our bags finally trickle out of the machine and we take off running, devices and other items in hand. There’s no time for zippers at this point.

Sarah, who chose poorly, was wearing Target flip flops. As the smacking of her feet behind me slowly start fading away I think to myself “she’d just want me to get there first and hold the plane… this is no time to be a gentleman” (she later confirmed those were her exact thoughts. we should get married)

At this point I’m basically in a romantic comedy. One of those movies where the protagonist races to the gate to catch the love of his life before they fly out of his life forever. Except in my case I’m literally running from my wife and when I arrive there’s no emotional crescendo. I can barely speak and all I get out is “we’re here, I don’t have a boarding pass… gasp… it’s a long… gasp… story… help.

McKenzie? We’ve been calling you?

I’m sorry, my ears must have been full of rage.

The gate is minutes from closing, but we get our passes just as another couple walks leisurely up to board the plane, hammering the final nail in the how-ridiculous-do-we-look-right-now-coffin.

We make it to our seats, drenched in sweat and with bladders painfully full. Sarah’s perhaps slightly less full than before we started our impromptu sprint down Cinnabon alley. A fun side effect of having to go through security again meant we had to dump our water bottles and had no time to refill them. And we’ve never needed water more, which was a running theme for the entire 9 hour flight.

Travel 🙌

But hey, we made it. In spite of Sarah apparently joking to the TSA security guard whom she was begging to pull up our records “I swear I’m not trying to blow up the plane”, no less. When she’s in stressful situations, some other part of her takes the wheel.

We’re tired and quite soggy… but damn it we’re on the plane. I sink into my seat and as the adrenaline starts to fade my mind wanders. I remember that I slapped an air tag on the bag we checked and have a peek.

🤔 Interesting, it looks like our bag is in baggage claim.

I held off on burdening Sarah with that news for a bit but decided that we should just accept that it’s forgotten and then be surprised if I’m wrong.

I’m not wrong.

So now I’m in Dubiln, wearing some very European, short camo boxer briefs I bought at TK Maxx (no, that’s not a typo) and Sarah has a new pair of Pumas.

Aer Lingus has one flight to Ireland the same time every day. So before leaving lost baggage, I had remarked to Marge #3 “I’d think they’d just throw it on that same flight tomorrow, right?”. She looked at me with a chuckle and said “Yeah, we’d love to think that too.”

Welcome to Ireland! Now I know why they drink so much.

We have phones, chargers, some toiletries, and 14 socks between us aside form what we both wore on the plane. I’m choosing to take it in stride because there’s not much we can do about it at this point. What’s done is done. Sarah is taking a nap but when she wakes up I’m going to pump us both full of some local food and drink and we’re going to start this trip as if it began at this hotel… which has pretty decent Wifi.

Leprechaun Jesus wants our story told.

Cheers 🍻

UPDATE: 30 hours behind us… she finally arrived.