This trip started with some uncertainty. I found myself wondering what the probability of us getting to Dublin on WestJet actually was, and whether the odds were in our favour. It seems fitting that this journey to the Bridges Conference began with a math problem of sorts. Watching the news, I saw that as a precautionary measure, many WestJet flights were being cancelled. Luckily, I'd originally booked through Delta using points, and they easily made the change for us. We left a day earlier, flew KLM to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to Dublin, and had a much better trip for it: fed, comfortable, no stress wondering if our flights would vanish out from under us. Sorry, Olly, that you had to weather that storm.
My son has been a great travel partner. Even-keeled, as long as I know when it's time for quiet. I've noticed he's often mathematising without realizing it: "Wow, that's expensive for dinner." "That's a lot for crisps." And I've caught myself doing the same, calculating the time difference between BC and Ireland, working out how long we have until our gate, dinner, hotel, bus stop. Even now, I'm thinking about how much downtime we need before our next outing. I'm thinking fish and chips. I'm thinking it's a little wild how often we want to eat, though I blame my 17-year-old, who managed two meals on the first flight and a sandwich on the hop to Dublin and then told me he "hadn't really eaten anything in a long time." Hence our real meal: a very good alfredo at the Clayton Hotel. Mushrooms, chicken, parm. Possibly the best I've had.
Sitting here afterward, back from some rainy, off-and-on, perfectly warmish wandering, I keep thinking about how strange and interesting time is, and how most of us just live inside this thing we've all agreed to. Whenever I travel across huge time zone changes, I find it fascinating in an almost childlike way. I know what time it is at home; I can just look at my phone. But there's something that never gets old about video-calling my husband and asking what time it is there, like the answer might surprise me.
Time keeps showing up in smaller ways too. It dictates how long we wait for a bus, or whether we walk instead. Some sources said the Latin Quarter was a 15–20 minute walk; it was closer to 40. I'd also read it would take 20 minutes to reach Bailey Hall for the conference, and I found myself wondering whether that was really true, or whether I'd need to build in more time. I started working backward from there: what time I want to arrive, minus the walk, minus breakfast, minus coffee, minus a shower. The same quiet arithmetic I do with my students without ever calling it math.
Jet lag had its own opinion about my schedule. I tried not to look at the clock and trusted I'd wake by 8:00. I did not. I woke up hoping the next morning would go better, and instead of the grocery run we'd planned, my son and I found a wonderful little breakfast spot instead: avocado toast and a latte that tasted like the sweet nectar of the gods for me, chicken and waffles (a bit too sweet, he decided) for him. Afterward we walked the Salthill Promenade, watched for divers who never quite arrived (the tide wasn't right), and I kicked the wall, though I couldn't talk my teenager into it.
Back on campus, I registered for the conference, still turning Euler's i over in my head from earlier, still not entirely sure I belonged in a room full of people who study this for a living. While I waited for my son, I met a man named Michael, here for the conference, from Germany but working in Osaka. I had to resist the urge to introduce myself as "just an elementary school teacher here as part of a master's degree." We just talked for a bit and shook hands instead. What better way to spread a love of math than to have someone like me in the room? It doesn't have to be only the geniuses. It needs the appreciators, the questioners, the ones still new to most of it.
The next morning, time asserted itself one more time before the conference even properly began. I was up before my alarm, on schedule, moving through the fog of not enough sleep, feeling smug about my cushion of time. Until my son knocked on my door in his sock feet to tell me he'd locked himself out of his room. Suddenly my abundant morning shrank into a small, urgent calculation: twenty minutes to walk there, minus a bit for my Achilles tendonitis pain, plus however long it would take to get him a new key card and bring it back. My comfortable margin narrowed into just enough, and not a minute more. Time. Argh.
And with that, key card delivered, son sorted, I made my way toward the opening remarks — still turning over Euler's i in my head, still feeling like the least mathematically credentialed person in the room, with no idea yet what the next four days were about to hand me.
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