Arrival

Ryanair offers cheap airfares and, occasionally, very cheap airfares - like €4 from Paris to London. I can see how they do that. In addition to being militant about baggage weight and charging astronomical fees for those who flaunt the regs - e.g., Cathy's $400 overweight baggage fee - the seats provide barely enough room for even my short legs. The plane's interior is plastered with advertising and the attendants spend the entire flight hawking wares up and down the aisle: newspapers and magazines, food and drink, perfume and smokeless tobacco. Each parade is preceded by a short commercial delivered by over the intercom by a staff member who could only be on commission to be so enthusiastic.

We arrive in Cork and I confirm my suspicions that Cathy will not be meeting me here on her way back from Amsterdam: her flight has been canceled. She had arrived with our host, Peggy, on April 3 and decided to spend a few days in Holland. Her flight was scheduled to arrive an hour after mine so she had offered to give me a ride to Crookhaven.

I try to call Peggy to see if she's heard anything from Cathy, but my global phone doesn't work. That's annoying. There was a small instruction sheet that I discover I've left at home.

Thinking I'll send her an email, I open the netbook, but it's out of juice. Got that covered. I whip out my electric converter, only to discover that it's not designed to take a grounded plug. Oy. Now that's going to be a huge problem. But in the meantime, at least I can send an email from my Droid, which will work on the free WiFi even though the phone isn't functional here. I peck out an email.

I herd my luggage over to Starbucks and get a €3 tea, only to discover I have no way of carrying it while wheeling these two obstreperous bags. I push and shove and drag the cases to a table and sit. A news crew is filming stranded travelers. Later, the producer edits the story's soundtrack on her laptop at a nearby table. The airport is emptying out.

I regularly check my email, but find only spam. Then I spot some payphones. I wrestle the luggage across the terminal, read the instructions, and have no success. There are three phones and each responds differently, but none with a completed call.

I sit back down. A while later I see another person at the phones, so I go over and attempt to call again. The guy slams down the receiver in disgust. I now have an international operator who asks me for the number that I've just keyed in. She places the call but there's no answer. I don't trust that she's gotten the number right. I try again, but the phone is dead. I try another phone. Success! I leave Peggy a message explaining the situation and telling her that she'll have to contact me via email.

I haul the luggage to a sandwich shop - the only option other than Starbucks - where I meet a young woman from London who wants to be there instead of here. She's living a vagabond life that has taken through Asia, largely, it seems, on the kindness of strangers. I give her a protein bar.

Back at my station by Starbucks, I read Peggy's email: "I will pick you up, just tell me where to meet you." As I type the response, I hear myself paged. I'm directed to a phone and there, on the other end, is Peggy, on her way to meet me at Starbucks.

Three hours later (and six hours after I arrived in Cork), we're enroute to Crookhaven, f;lying along the skinny, impossibly windy, hedgerow-lined, ravine-bordered tracks the Irish call roads. I'm trying to take in the bucolic scenery and listen to the adventures to date, but all I can think about is the fact that I'm totally screwed without a converter so I can work on my netbook.

Finally we stop before an even narrower lane and Peggy puts down the windows. "Pull in the mirror," she says, and we fold in the sideview mirrors to squeeze the car between rock walls that lead up a rutted, curving incline. Just when I think we're going to rocket out over the wall and into the sea, we turn sharply down the drive and see ahead the lighthouse and the amazing glass box that's now home.