The white paneled van pulled up alongside us. I needed to make a quick decision.
We were only a few days into our month-long European vacation, and my daughter and I had already experienced a few challenges. For one, we hadn't planned when we booked our plane travel that Kelsey would be spending most of the time in a walking boot due to recent surgery. I had started off our trip by mistakenly checking us out of our hostel late at night in a jet-lagged daze. And now, on our third day of the trip, we were having trouble finding the port where we were supposed to catch our ferry.
We had taken a municipal bus to what we thought would be close to the port. But after walking for quite a ways in each direction, we realized that it was getting late. We were worried that we weren't going to catch the ferry that we'd booked to get us on our way to Great Britain. As we huddled together, the dreary Irish mist turned to drizzle.
When I saw the van pull up alongside us, I realized that this was the same van that I'd just seen leaving the shipyards. The driver must have done a U-turn and driven back to us.
"Do you ladies need help?" the driver asked. I remember all the times my mom told me not to talk to strangers. All those times I'd been admonished never to get into a strange car. And, especially, to avoid white-paneled vans.
And so we got in.
I told the driver the name of the ferry line that we were seeking. He thought for a moment and then said, "I think I know where that is." Then he looked around nervously. "I could get in so much f***in' trouble if anyone saw you get in my van," he said.
I'd learned by this time, not to be offended by the expletive. In Ireland, or at least in Dublin, it is an obligatory element of nearly every sentence.
Greg the Dockworker cheerfully got us to our port in plenty of time to board.
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