Cardiff and Swansea

On Tuesday morning I awoke early and snatched some food from breakfast, then shouldered my pack and headed for downtown, to use bus 41 to the Dublin Airport.

I had been using, since Thursday, a five day Rambler bus pass, and it had expired the previous evening. However, I had not traveled through seven countries in the last month and a half for nothing, and I had done my share of bus and tram hopping from Germany all the way to Greece. In the two dozen people crushing onto the bus system, I flashed my pass at the driver, pantomimed using the automatic validator, and climbed upstairs for the ride to the airport.

This is made possible by the Dublin bus system because they have designed the buses to have only a single entrance, and during high-traffic periods this means that a crush of people getting into the bus, with a machine on the right and the driver on the left, and the driver doesn't bother trying to police the people that use the machine.

So if you visit Dublin any time soon, grab a single day pass and travel to your hearts content. Unethical? Sure, but this is a bus system which decided to issue new route maps, then put together zilch for a temporary replacement, leaving us visitors stranded with no knowledge of where the buses actually go. So I felt they owed me a free ride or two.

Arriving at the airport I turned in my bag, cleared security and headed for the boarding area. After waiting at the gate for an hour, and observing a three or four year old repeat QoD's airport rollover stunt, only face-first from a height of 4 feet off a window ledge, I acquired a seat on our nice comfy fourty minute hop to Wales.

My plane landed in Cardiff a few minutes behind schedule, and I wound up missing the 11AM shuttle from Cardiff City Center to Swansea by just 5 minutes, leaving me stranded until the noon shuttle. There's not a lot to do in Cardiff when you've only got an hour and your trapped in the bus station, so I twiddled my thumbs and waited for the train, working idly on the last few chapters of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book while I waited.

When the shuttle arrived I threw my bag below and climbed aboard, and enjoyed gliding through the idyllic Welsh countryside (some of the most lush of any on my travels) until I arrived in Swansea city center around 1:20. My instructions were to go through the car-park next to the bus station and wait at a set of benches in front of Tesco. My experience with Tesco being limited to the Tesco Express convenience-markets in London, I was a little concerned that I might not see where I was supposed to go, but I shouldn't have worried.

The Tesco in Swansea is the height and size of a Wal-Mart back home, large and hulking with a brightly colored band above the entrance that runs all the way around the building. It dominates the landscape of the area, with a huge parking lot in front and a giant brown brick multi-level car-park next door, which looks like it was awkwardly shoved between the giant supermarket and the bus station with a shoehorn.

I jumped from the bus, snatched my pack from the luggage area below, and headed around the front of the car-park for the Tesco. There I found that just between the Tesco and the car park there was a row of benches next to a tiny side-street that was used as a pick-up and drop off point. People did their shopping, dropped themselves and their bags on the benches, and waited for their rides. In a nice organized little line behind the benches were a set of saplings, and the area was clean and pleasant. I looked around for 80, but didn't see her, so I figured she had looked for me at 1PM (when we hoped I would arrive) and then, since she didn't see me, popped into Tesco to do her shopping. Since the benches were pretty full, I dropped my Dakine against the last tree in the line, making a back rest, and settled down to listen to my Rio and wait.

I waited until just after 2PM. She still hadn't appeared, and I was starting to wonder if I'd missed her somehow. Perhaps she had gotten the day wrong? Or forgotten I was coming? No, we'd just discussed it yesterday. 80 isn't forgetful like that. So I figured that perhaps she was still up at the bus station, having not seen me she'd gotten confused and figured that maybe I was there. So I hiked up and searched around the bus station for a while, then back down. No luck, and no 80!

So I settled back in on one of the now-clear benches (what else could I do?) and resumed reading, figuring that if I hadn't seen her by 3PM, I would break into my pack, find my copy of her mobile number and give her a ring.

Just before 3, I was just beginning to fear I might be forced to do so (and was starting to worry that maybe she'd gotten into some horrible accident and was in hospital) when she grabbed my neck from behind while I was reading.

She'd been in the area since 12:30! She'd been there to watch the 11AM shuttle unload, but I wasn't on it, so she had gone and done her shopping, then come back and checked the benches, then gone up to find the shuttle. Somehow I'd slipped past her to the benches while she was searching for the shuttle, and when she returned to look for me she didn't see me because the backpack (which she'd just finished traveling with for a month, and I figured would recognize) obscured me since I was sitting on the ground.

So it was that we crossed each other again (we think) when I got up to check at the bus station, and she finally found me when she came back. Apparently I'm easy to misplace, a fact we would confirm in the library the following day.

So around 3PM we grabbed all our stuff, packed it up, and hiked over to her place in the western end of Swansea. It's a nice little townhouse, halfway between the city center and the university, it is perfectly located for a student. We bustled in and dropped all our gear in the kitchen so we could unpack all of 80s food, and debated cleaning the kitchen. Covered in road-dust and sunshine, I grabbed a quick shower, and then we hit the streets again. We hiked out to Mumbles, the tiny fishing town named after a pair of beautiful little islands on the point just west of the bay. There we grabbed a few pictures, enjoyed the surf, and then headed back into town.

We were hoping to get downtown in time to catch "Sahara" at the Swansea cinema, since it was a movie we were both interested in seeing. Once inside the theater I could almost believe I was back in the States. Everything was familiar, from the ticket process to the seating layout. The movie was fun, fast paced, and enjoyable, and of course the handsome Matthew McConaughey and adorably foreign Penelope Cruz made it more than servicable, even if the plot was thin on practicality and heavy on a sort of modern American James Bond feel.

When the movie was over, we strolled back to the beach and then across to 80s place, and made a late night of it, drinking knockoff Malibu and Sprite and reminiscing about our trips. We had a lot to talk about, and it was fun to recall the stories and adventures we'd had just a couple short weeks before. I filled her in on Rome and how the kids had handled all the adventures of the area and she told me how classes were going and downloaded the last few pictures I had from our time together in Ireland.

I crashed on the couch even later, and neither of us wanted to be up and ready in time for 80s class at 11PM the next day. Sadly, no cancellation provided itself, and so we dragged ourselves from sleep at 9:30 or so, cleaned up, repacked (me) and grabbed coursework (her), then made the hike to school.

80s school is on the other side of a beautiful city park that she walks through on her daily commute, and I wish I'd thought to grab a picture of it as we strolled in that morning. I did remember to get a picture of her in front of her corner pub (where she'd developed a penchant for rugby, I hear) and another in front of her engineering building on campus later. I forgot to get one in front of her house, but hopefully she'll realize how important a picture of that will be later, and will get one before she leaves Wales in June.

As we passed through the park 80 filled me in on the layout of the library and gave me directions to the computer room. She was planning to leave me in the library to update while she was in class, and she had already given me a slip of paper with her student number and password so I could get into the system.

As she was giving me directions I listened with as much attention as I could muster. "Ok, when you enter the library you'll have to take an immediate left and then. . ." Other students wandered by, and the sun shone overhead, begging to have us stop and bask in it. ". . .a right. That part is easy. [static] Next. . ." A girl sauntered by with a friend. She had a dancer's body and a baby doll T with "Von Bitch" printed on it in cute italic lettering. My eyes followed her (and her curves), as she passed us while my ears, temporarily given short-shrift by my distracted brain, tried their best to keep up with the directions "blah blah just ahead [garble] a computer room and if that one is full there is another up the stairs in the back."

"Oh, cool. I don't think I'll have any trouble finding it." I fibbed, dragging myself from my reverie, hoping that my natural geek would home in on any computer in the library anyway, and besides, I could always ask somebody.

When we got to campus I entered the library while she took off for class, and inside the library, sure enough, an immediate left was my only course of action. I strolled down a short hall and then took a right. This right turned out to be around a freestanding wall, not a corner, and just beyond it was another hallway back in the direction I had come. So rather than turning only 90 degrees, I turned 180 around the corner. I looked up and voila, just as she had promised, there was a computer lab. "PC room 1" was proudly stamped on the door, and through the plate glass I could see that several of the 30 or so terminals were still free. I stopped at the door to make sure that there wasn't a class being held in the room, then entered, dropped my kit, and logged in.

I updated the blog, checked on some scheduling and weather, printed some ticket information I needed, then checked the time. 11:45. Great! 80 would be out of class in five minutes and we'd have time to grab lunch before I boarded my bus to London at 1PM in front of campus.

11:50. No 80.

I checked my e-mail.

12:00. No 80.

I checked some old web comics I used to read. Maybe her professor had kept her late?

12:10. No 80.

Good grief. Had she gotten delayed somehow? Had I misunderstood when her class ended? I checked an old forum I hadn't visited in years.

12:25. No 80.

Egads! What could possibly have gone wrong this time? I checked my e-mail again.

Sitting in my inbox, from 80, was a message time-stamped about 10 minutes before. "Where are you?!" was the subject.

I fired back. "In the library. PC room 1! Where I am supposed to be!"

12:35. 80 comes in.

"I didn't even know this room was HERE!"

"What?! I followed your directions exactly!" I fired back, hoping to be believed. "I took a right and went straight ahead and here we are!" I gathered my kit and 80 shook her head and beckoned for me to follow.

"No, I was talking about going straight. Up here. To the MAIN lab."

I followed her back to the corner and headed off at what would have been the 90 degree turn, and into a cavernous main room with 90+ computers and students everywhere. "Ooooh." I said. "No wonder it took you so long to try and e-mail. You just thought you'd overlooked me."

She turned back to me and made a face. "I didn't even know we had a PC room 1. I'd never been there before."

"Oh. Sorry. I guess we don't have time for lunch then."

So we went outside and got a picture of 80 in front of the building that has been her home for the last few months, and then we headed for the bus stop.

At the bus stop I said goodbye and we debated whether or not we were going to get a chance to see each other this summer before I (hopefully) depart on my next great adventure. We shared a Mon Cheri and I said I would try to e-mail her from my next stop, Oxford, where I would be staying a very short night with two old roommates of mine, who you'll meet in the next update.