Romancing the Stone: Ireland Part One

My recent pilgrimage to Ireland:  the Old Sod, the Emerald Isle, the Motherland—began with a nine and half hour direct flight from Los Angeles to Dublin.  I rode on the airline with the big shamrock, AerLingus—which I believe is Gaelic for some sort of intimate act.  

If I was to have any of that purported Irish luck, I wasn’t getting it on this flight. Normally, I sleep about as well on planes as I do sitting tied to a splintered, wooden chair under a bright spotlight being periodically beaten and punched in the gut by captors yelling at me in a foreign language—in short, not very well—and the two red-faced infants seated directly across from me ensured that streak would continue. 

Anticipating that I wouldn’t sleep, I’d brought along my notebook and pen, and my iPod, replete with sixteen hours worth of songs. I was also provided a choice of six different channels on the little screen in the seat-back in front of me. I watched a one-hour concert of Ireland’s own U2, which is mandatory viewing for crossing the Atlantic. The beginning of the song, “Where the Streets Have No Name,” could raise the lethargy from the bones of the dead. Feeling pumped and on a roll, I then watched Walk the Line, which was just as good the second time, and then a little of the movie, Just Friends, starring Ryan Reynolds.

This was bearable until the first major plot point hit. Ryan’s character is on a private plane that happens to have trouble and lands ... right in his hometown ... where he hasn’t been in ten years ... and can’t fly out for a few days ... right at Christmas-time and right when the girl he’d always had a crush on is back as well ... and then it took a turn for the “too coincidental.” In a harried attempt to save my dying (and flying) brain cells, I hit the off button to my TV repeatedly but it wouldn’t turn off. 

I informed the middle-aged, Irish flight attendant (all of whom were named Mary) that it seemed to be broken. She essentially replied “Isn’t that too bad for you?,” and went back about her Mary way.