Beginnings

Goodbye Oregon!

A delayed flight into Boston landed me on a rebooked flight to Dublin and 21 hours to kill in the Boston Logan Airport ("all hotels within one hour of the airport are full," the man at the information desk told me, and recommended sleeping in the area between the B and C terminals, where there was no music). I scouted the area, amused to discover a corridor with twelve empty rocking chairs, some of which were breaking out in purple hand-painted flowers. I eventually picked a bank of chairs that might offer a bit more head support, discovered that vacuum packing bags are decent cushions, and slept in the lulls between airport activity -- the time from 1-2AM between the Zamboni-like floor cleaner and persistent whistler in Terminal B and the changing of the guard of the airport staff (including a man who rushed back and forth from one staff lounge to another shouting "I can't believe it!") around 3 and 4AM, and finally the resumption of passenger traffic at about 5:30 with an exuberant tour group, at which point I gave up and found myself coffee and a raspberry croissant.

            The flight to Dublin itself went smoothly. I was holding my breath over Immigration, because I had scheduled my trip to be less than three months, but over ninety days, and discovered that there seemed to be some contention over which time range was acceptable without a visa. However, I had unwittingly printed off the magic piece of paper -- an immigration ID from the WWOOF Ireland website (apparently very few WWOOFers do this, and not having this information can get you shipped back across the Atlantic) and the immigration officer worked me through in a bit under three minutes.