I was surprised when I saw no lines of travelers waiting, indeed it had looked deserted over in that section of the busy airport compared to everywhere else. It felt odd there wasn’t a queue given it was the weekend.
A solitary guy who appeared to be manning all the different rental desks came toward me as I approached the counter. He informed me the whole fleet of cars had already been hired out.
“How could you not know its St. Patrick’s Day this weekend? Surely you must have been aware?”
I was. I just hadn’t realized the world and its dog would have descended on Dublin for it.
“I’m afraid the whole of the fleet is out, and we’ve nothing coming back until Monday at the earliest.”
I stared for a second and wondered how I would get myself to Belfast with no car.
“Alright, can you tell me where I can get a chauffeured car please?”
“We've none of them either. All booked out. Like I said—”
“It’s St. Patrick’s Day this weekend. Gotcha,” I finished as I tried to keep my temper.
I glanced around, figuring I must have at least had a little good fortune as I hadn’t been recognized by anyone yet, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before that luck ran out. With that in mind, I had to find somewhere else to be other than the public expanse of a busy airport.
“Train station?”
“To?”
“Belfast?”
The attendant drew in a deep breath and I knew there was going to be more bad news. I needed to cut a break.
"Ah well, you see… most of the seats would have been booked… that is if the trains were running that far. They’re not. Snow you see… the Brits have got buckets of the stuff up there in Northern Ireland. No trains are reaching as far as the border. Frozen points on the tracks—even if it isn’t due to snow. Strange to have the snow this late in the year,” he mused almost to himself.
My brain went numb for a second because I was stuck in a country I hadn’t intended to be in. Luckily, they had let me in, thanks to the special relationship America has with Ireland. A visa waiver had helped with that and the immigration officer was a fan of my band, DistRoyed.
Normally I was a resourceful kind of guy, but the St. Patrick’s holiday had me beat. “Alright point me to the nearest taxi rank.”
“To be sure,” he said, which I think meant 'of course'. “Take that escalator down to the ground floor, make your way to the second set of doors—not the first as that’ll take you to the buses going to the center of town. You won’t want to be doing that this evening because it’ll be heaving with all kinds of people out trying to get merry.”
I stared at him again because he was fueling me with all this extra information I hadn’t asked for. Something told me that theme was going to continue until I reached Paddy in Belfast.
The trip was already tainted when my travel plans were thwarted, and to be told there wasn’t much I could do about it made a bad situation worse. I felt more than a little vulnerable being there without back up. All it would have taken was for some heckler who hated our band to decide to take me on because his girlfriend had the hots for me and I knew I’d be toast.
I was in a strange country, with no transport and no one to assist me. It had been a long time since I’d been in this position.
Following the car rental guy’s directions, I entered a long queue outside the airport doors. For almost forty minutes I stood in line waiting for my turn, and during that time there were more than a few double takes, but after a while they made me smile because I could see what they thought: That guy at the cab rank looks like Jamie Fontaine from DistRoyed.
Eventually—after what felt like an age—it was my turn and I slung my carry-on in the back before sliding into the front seat of the cab.
“Belfast, please,” I said with some relief.
“No can do.”
My sense of humor left me. “I’d like to go to Belfast please; my plane was diverted and I need to get there at all costs. It’s my best friend’s wedding tomorrow.
“Then your best friend should’ve picked a better time to get married. It’s St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow, and it doesn’t fall at the weekend often. Everyone will be out celebrating from now until Sunday night.”
“Why do people keep telling me that? Listen, I don’t care how much it costs, can you please just get me there? I’ll make it worth your while.”
“No amount of money would make it worth my while if I had to face my angry wife afterward. She’s expecting to go out; even bought a new dress for the occasion. We’re all off to a Ceilidh in the local town hall. My life wouldn’t be worth living if I let her down and drove north of the border with you at this late hour of the day. I’d never get back in time.”
“Look, there are no cars for hire and I don’t know anyone here. I’m stranded.”
“To be sure you’re in a fix, but I can’t help you. Besides, all the wife’s relatives are coming for the dance so I’m hardly likely to embarrass her. Family first during holiday times. I’ve worked during the holidays when the kids were little and…”
I stared pointedly at him as he gave more reasons why he couldn’t do the job he was paid to do while I’d already begun to think of another plan. It had become apparent I probably wasn’t going to go far in my immediate future and I needed a little luck of the Irish to see me though. There was no way I was getting back out in line. I knew how fortunate I’d been not to be recognized.
“Okay, can you take me to a good quality hotel for now? I need to be somewhere private to work this all out.”
“Now that I can do. The Croke Hotel is a lovely comfortable place. It’s close to town and only about a fifteen-minute drive from here.
Finley, the taxi driver, crammed in his life story during the short drive until he stopped at a decent looking hotel down a quiet, narrow road. He dropped me off and wished me luck as he accepted my US Dollars in payment because I had no Euros in hand. I hadn’t even thought about currency.
Paddy’s brother was supposed to have met me at the airport to take me back to Paddy’s house. I hardly ever used money these days. Everything was card swiped, pinged, or wireless touched. It had never occurred to me I’d need any.
Glancing at the building, I sighed with relief once again and headed inside to the check-in desk.
“I need a room, please.”
The smartly dressed check-in clerk gave me a look of utter disbelief. “You haven’t booked one already?” she asked, her voice rising with the incredulous request I’d made. She looked at me like I was a crazy person.
“No.” I glanced around and noticed a couple of girls checking me out, “I’ll take anything you have.”
“Without a prior reservation I can’t help you, Sir. We have nothing to offer. We’re full until—”
“Monday,” I said, finishing off her sentence for her. “Look I’m stranded. I was supposed to fly into Belfast, but my plane was diverted to—”
“Dublin… it happens when it snows. And the other way around sometimes when the snow is here in the South.”