Planes, Trains & … um, Bicycles? Shank’s Mares?

Yes! We’re still here! We’re still alive! And, best of all, we have a Plan in place for the next several weeks of our lives. A Plan. Yes! Though the world has such a way of doing what it pleases regardless of our wishes, our Plan seems to be working. It seems like someone up/out there really, really, really likes us — call it the Divine, the universe or karma or whatever. We have had so many unexpectedly excellent breaks; we have so much for which to be grateful.

Thus far, much of the Plan has required aggravating phone calls, aching limbs (T-dap: not a cool handshake after all, but the Tetanus/Diphtheria/Pertussis inoculation. SO not cool.), unexpected trips to government offices and yards of bubble wrap. It has involved frantic manuscript completion, strangers with packing peanuts, garage sales and garbage bags.

The best part we haven’t even gotten to. That bit of the Plan involves two seats, a dining car, and the whole of the American plains. We’re going to take a bit of a train odyssey on our way out of town.

We’ve actually bought our tickets — one set for Amtrack, coast-to-coast, where we’ll get to see wheat fields, sunflowers, rolling hills and prairie, and the other set for Aer Lingus (I don’t think you can even say that without sounding vaguely Irish), with the most gobstoppingly inexpensive tickets we found. (Prices right now are astounding. Incentive to come to the UK despite the deflated dollar?) Neither one of us have ever ridden a train for multi-state journeys in the States — it usually costs too much, but the Amtrak fare is at present quite, quite reasonable. It’s… amazing, to be honest. I don’t believe in luck, but for goodness sakes, you wouldn’t believe how everything is coming together.

We’re delaying our departure date because Mac will be teaching one last class — (no idea where the cheque will be sent, since we as of yet have no address, but hey – we’re on the way to having an account with the Bank of Scotland/Halifax, so…). It’s simply providential that he was offered another contract, since he will once again be teaching State employees — and the State has not yet approved a budget.

At times, our State is comically disorganized (Only comical if you don’t work for them, please note). State departments have had no funding for employee training for weeks — no budget, no training, and no work for the tech teachers. Most of those contracting with the State take it in stride — as mentioned, our state is chronically dysfunctional, and this budget delay thing happens almost every year. This time it was truly bad timing for us, but then — suddenly — a job opens, and we’ll still be here (barely!) to take it. We’re going to land on our feet, like toast jelly-side-up, like… a favorite dish dropped and miraculously recovered unscathed.

Did I already say “amazing?”

An interesting side trip to the Plan — we actually have a little stop — a layover from the train at Union Station in Chicago for six hours. (Anybody have any ideas what to do in Chicago from four until ten p.m.?) Things have been so nuts lately that it might actually be fun to sit down somewhere and have a coffee and just… I don’t know, look at each other. I think we’ll see a movie… walk around… say, “Hey! We’re in Chicago!” and get back on the train. At any rate, once we get to New York at five the next afternoon, we’ll stay overnight in Newark with a friend and then… our plane leaves JFK on September 3rd. Happy Labor Day, airline personnel! (Incidentally, we also have a four hour layover in Dublin – from 6 – 10 am, and no, we don’t expect to see any of you at that hour. We’ll wave in the general direction of your sleeping houses.)

Between periods of ratcheting panic and disbelief, we have glimpses of ..realism. It doesn’t yet seem like this is real, like we are doing this, but once the cars are sold, and the printers are gone (Sob! My beautiful printer!) and the desks are sold and the house is let/rented (Must get used to the word “let” for that one), well… then it’ll seem like “Yes. We are moving. To. The Isle of Gaels. For real.”

For real.

Mercy!

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.