Photos (London/Ireland 2015)

(Okay so I never finished this post but I don’t want it to go to waste so I’m just publishing it so I don’t lose it!)

Right now I’m on a plane home to Denver, connecting via Newark. I had planned to post more often over the past week but long drives, late nights, and terrible wi-fi put a bit of a damper on that plan. I should know myself better when traveling internationally, I usually collapse as soon as we check in to the next hotel and have no time in the morning to record my day (and this time we had a new hotel nearly everyday). So anyway, where did we leave off?

Once we made it to Central London, we sprinted over to Westminster Abbey and got in to see it just before it closed for the weekend. “Closed for the Weekend” could have been the working title for our time spent in London as almost every shop and store closed after our first night there. Monday was a bank holiday and so by the time we were done with the Abbey on Saturday a lot of the city seemed to be closing up shop. London goes to bed early – the city was fairly quiet and not many restaurants were left open after 19:00. We met Katie for dinner at a pub in a pretty cool albeit crowded outdoor mall type area called Covent Garden, had some alright pub food and headed out to walk the city for the night. It was a fun night, and it was a nice break from our usual reliance on maps and directions to just follow her around the city. Of course nothing was open to go inside, but we got a beautifully romantic twilight view of the bridges and churches the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, City Hall, and St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The next morning was rough. Jet-lagged but full of good intentions we decided our remaining day would best be spent at the Queen’s weekend home Windsor Castle. We took the Underground to the train, and the train to it’s end, then spent the day exploring. Thanks to my selection of a devious partner and rule breaker, I was warned that unless Tim deleted the pictures he took in the absolutely no photography section of the museum the camera would be given to the police and we would be asked to leave. Although scary and stressful, the best part about the experience was that I had a little bit of leverage throughout the rest of the day which could easily be obtained by reminding him that “Well if it weren’t for you the guard at the Queens vacation house wouldn’t have held a gun to my back and threatened to kick me out of the country.” We left the next day.

The departing flight was mostly fine, mostly. Except for the crazy Brit that took my carry on out of the overhead bin and accused me of using space that was his, except for the fact that we were in an exit row and HAD to store both carry ons in the overhead bin. Once he bitched me out and I raged back at him, he took his seat next to me for the next hour. Tip for those who don’t travel often: Don’t screw the person sitting next to you before the plane leaves the ground elsewise you will have a very uncomfortable flight.

Upon landing in the “London to Ireland” section of Dublin’s Airport, we were greeted by an immigration line that took
1. Alittle over an hour to get through
2. Most of my happiness
This was fairly unpleasant, and there were no bathrooms from the plane until we cleared immigration so also fairly uncomfortable. This much older section of the airport reminded me of some kind of basement you might find in a catholic church, with old white paint and tired wood paneling. But before I could lodge a complaint I was in the rental car having a panic attack while Tim got used to driving on the left side of the road.

It would be one thing to just get used to sitting in the passengers seat on the left hand side of the car, but it’s another thing entirely to do it without any control of the vehicle, and someone you dearly love repeatedly performing what seems to be an attempt to smash you into whatever is along the road on your side of the car. I went through several panic words to communicate to Tim that he was about to shave off my door before landing on the word “Scooch”, which I think I said a total number of fifty times in three days despite his dramatic improvement in learning to drive in a foreign country.
Although the distances we had to drive were short, the roads are winding and narrow (and narrower (and narrower)) in Ireland, so it felt like days between one destination and the next. The twists and hills were fun, but after three days I was getting carsick just thinking about getting back in and was glad to be rid of the Audi when we dropped it off at the airport in Dublin.

Our first night in Ireland we stayed in a beautiful castle called Dromoland. Its great stone walls, painfully manicured golf course, and gifted garden were a completely joy. Whatever sense we wanted to have of living in Downton Abbey we got from Dromoland, aside from my luxurious shower somehow dripping down into the main dining room. Our room was jawdroppingly ornate, and though it’s the type of aesthetic that would typically cause me to throw up in my mouth, it was done tastefully and it didn’t even give me the slightest sense of indigestion. It was the one time in London/Ireland that I felt like I could have been talking to my favorite Downton Abbey Character, Lady Sybil.

We sadly departed Dromoland, and headed off to the Cliffs of Moehr on our way to Killarney. National Park. Then stayed in Kreepy Kenmare. Then drove through Waterford and stayed Kenkenny @ Paris, Texas and almost lost our rental car.

Spent two night in Dublin.

 

I didn’t know what to title this post. I’m not even sure what I really want to say in it, just that I want it to be. I honestly don’t know if I can even compose myself long enough to say what I want to say, so instead I’m just going to let my family and heroes say it for me.

I love you so much. And I couldn’t be more happy. Damn right you should have those same rights. And in your lifetime too.

A lot has changed sweetheart and you should cry if you feel like it because no on thought it would ever be this equal this quickly. It makes me have a lot of faith in our world.

Love and support for you always Chris so happy for you today!

I love you extra much today and hope you’re celebrating!

Love you so much! We are so thankful Tim has you in his life.We are so glad Tim has his family!

Well congrats. All I can say is it’s about time. It’s been long overdue. Now if they can finally get rid of that stupid confederate flag.

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
“The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered.”

The feeling I have is so different from just being happy, the feeling I have is something like loved, respected, valued, validated, accepted, cherished, celebrated. Maybe I can say something about that.

My whole life I have been different. I didn’t even know I was gay until middle school, but I knew that I made friends differently, laughed differently, saw things differently. And not always in a positive way – sometimes I saw everyone else enjoying things I could not bring myself to enjoy. It feels alienating, lonely, and frustrating. When I found out I was gay I was scared, angry, broken hearted. What can it possibly be like for young men in the future to never have to feel those things I felt, besides completely amazing. And even I was not the first, not the worst off, never put into an institution where I had to be ‘corrected’, never put in jail for loving someone, never tied to a split-rail fence and beaten and left to die in the cold of night. I wish I could thank so many of those men and women who have been honored today, without them I would not have the fabulous life I have grown to love. For every heartbreak we had when one of us died, were turned away, rejected, ignored, assaulted… we made it. We never stopped loving, we were brave – we were so so brave, we risked everything, and today we celebrate a journey none of us choose to make, but made anyway. Here is a day to us, and tomorrow for those that helped us get here. For equality for women, for equality for black people, for equality for transgendered people. We have a long way to go, but we have come so far.

With love,
Chris

In leu of an update tonight due to sleepiness from the grandeur of Ireland, I present to you this poem written by Robert Frost that has been with us most of the day. 

Mending Wall

Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963

 Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’