Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Ireland

Leprechauns. Irish Spring. Potato famines. Lucky Charms. Fungi the gay dolphin of Dingle. Now that I've gotten the obvious, cliched Ireland joke topics out of the way, allow me to beat each one to death individually and in much greater detail. We got to Dublin around the same time as our traveling companions Erin and Jon Sadler, picked up our sweet Land Rover, and headed north after visiting the famous Guinness mines that our guidebook, Rock Steven's Ireland, said not to miss. The driving, handled by Jon and Liz, was interesting. The turns and round-abouts didn't seem to pose a big challenge but figuring out the correct distance between the oncoming traffic on the right and the curbs/shrubs on the left proved a little difficult on the narrow, 100 km/h roads. No accidents occurred despite our snooty GPS lady's best efforts to direct us down every 2-meter-wide horse path on the island.

It also took a while to stop thinking "Watch the road for fook's sake!" every time the front seat passenger turned around to say something to the back seaters and "Who would let a six-year old drive a car!" every time we passed a car with a kid in the front. Other than that, adjusting to the Irish lifestyle was all too easy once we figured out a few basic questions such as whether or not ordering coffee in Ireland got you one with whiskey by default unless you ordered it America. It didn't, sadly. We also wondered what they call Irish car bombs. We described them to a few different bartenders and none of them knew what we were talking about. We (I) also pondered whether every good-bye in Ireland was an Irish good-bye and whether that made actually saying good-bye to an Irishman impossible. Yeah...think about it.
Our first stop was the Giant's Causeway which was pretty awesome. Volcanoes: is there anything they can't awesomeize?
Liz at Giant's Causeway

Erin and Jon crossing the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge

Dunluce Castle

The next day we went to the Cliffs of Moher, which were really, really high. They have a section with retaining walls but those walls end and there's a sign telling you not to go any farther. There's nobody guarding it however so people go to where you can look straight down at a drop that would most certainly ruin your day.
The second night we stayed at Ashford castle, a 19th century home built for the Guinness family. Activities available to guests include golf, equestrian, trap shooting, and falconry. Instead, we stayed up all night with some fresh-out-of-rehab trust fund kid named Don and let him buy us drinks and show us off limits sections of the castle due to his having been coming there for 20 years and being on a first name basis with all the staff. It was a fun night and I even found an unopened Cuban Cohiba somebody had left behind (I know, castle people, right?) and gave it a good home. As Erin succinctly put it the next day, we kind of made that castle our bitch. I think old man Guinness would have been proud. Or appalled. Or both. Anyways, here's to you, Don.


Enjoying our evening at Ashford Castle - Cong

The next day we made a short drive to Galway, a traditional pub and music city on the west coast. It wasn't much for scenery but the music was good, we had conversations with nearly everyone we were within five feet of, and some 20-year-old Ron Weasley look alike took us to Club 903 after the respectable pubs closed.

The next day we were off to Dingle via the Burren. The Burren is one of the most desolate areas in all of Ireland. During one of noted British asshole Cromwell's campaigns in Ireland, one of his generals said of the Burren, "There isn't tree to hang a man, water to drown a man nor soil to bury a man." And thus the residents were spared from Cromwell's protestant murdering. So they had that going for them. We though it was pretty. After a GPS lady-directed goose chase over some of Ireland's narrowest roads, we popped out at a ferry station which took us across the River Shannon onto the Dingle Peninsula, one of the most picturesque shorelines in Ireland and the westernmost point in Europe.

Crossing the River Shannon


Jon and Erin

"The next parish over is Boston," Rick Steve claims the residents are fond of saying. We had to drive across Connor Pass, a one lane road with steep and deadly drops on one side, to get into the town itself. It was exciting, especially since I didn't have to drive it.

The driving loop around the peninsula was fairly breathtaking and we stopped at this 12th century church to renew our wedding vows by touching our thumbs together through a hole in a pre-Christian ogham stone that was already there for hundreds of years when they built the church and saying "I swear to God." Wedding vows, pagan style.

A little less formal the second time around.


We even got a little golf in at a pitch and putt with a very nice backdrop. Jon won.


In Dingle, there lives a (according to Erin and John's Irish friend Mark) gay dolphin named Fungi (FOON-ghee). People go out on boats to see him. What makes him gay, you ask? Risque posters of Flipper on his bedroom walls? A lifelong dream of performing on Sea World, the Dolphin Broadway? A Google search for Fungi+Dingle+Gay+Dolphin yielded a link stating that people think he's gay because he prefers the company of humans to that of his own pod and that he often has bite marks on him that people hypothesize might be the result of unwanted sexual advances made towards other male dolphins. So basically humans are his interspecies fag hags. And also, our IT guy now thinks I have a thing for hot, same-sex scatological mammal-on-mushroom action.

From Dingle, we made our way to Kilkenny, a medieval brewery town in the countries interior. On the way, we stopped in Killarney National Park and the Rock of Cashel, a spooky church ruins built on a defensive high spot that'd been fought over for centuries. Kilkenny itself was decent and had a castle.
Rock of Cashel

From Kilkenny, we completed our loop back to Dublin where we toured Trinity College's library, home to the Book of Kells, a 9th century illustrated version of the gospels written by Celtic monks that obviously took a very long time to complete.


Coffees on the Quad at Trinity College

That night, we met Mark and Finola, the aforementioned, Italy-met friends of Erin and Jon for Italian food and Irish merriment. They were pure Irish gold and we were hip deep in lively conversation practically before names were exchanged. Mark has apparently done some serious face sucking with the Blarney Stone.




We left early the next morning sad to leave but happy to be headed home. We never saw any leprechauns, although we did see a leperchaun colony. Wee fingers and pointy little noses strewn everywhere. Very sad. I already miss Irish breakfast, which consists of meat, including blood sausage. Mmmmmm.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Two-wheeled tough guy

If there's one thing I've learned from the cyclists vs. drivers feud, and from life in general, it's that a lot of people are A-holes and/or clueless to the impact their actions have on others. I see it almost every day, from the crosswalk-blocking, into bike lane-swerving drivers to the bikers who ride the wrong way down one ways and make drivers with green lights stop while they cross on red. My favorite Boston biking moment was when an obnoxious woman in a SUV on her cell phone came barreling around a left turn on a green (not a green arrow), slammed on the brakes at the last second to avoid taking out line of bikers who were crossing the street on a walk signal, and screamed "IT IS A GREEN LIGHT!" out her window. "You are an idiot!" I replied, which got a laugh from a few of the other nearly recently deceased pedal commuters. A few months ago I had the dubious honor of giving the finger to possibly the oldest man who's ever been given the finger after he made a left turn right into me, slamming on his brakes only at the last second. We had eye contact the whole time. When I flipped him off he said "Aaaaaagh." A-holeism knows no age. I certainly don't follow all the rules of the road, but when I cross on a red light I make sure nobody is coming and if I briefly ride on the sidewalk to avoid some obstruction I make sure to slow way down and give pedestrians a wide berth.

The bike path I ride on is split, one road for bikes and one for peds. I rarely see bikers on the pedestrian path, but I always see peds on the bike path. It's fine, the bike path is farther from the road and feels more "parky." If I was out with my kids I'd want them to be as far away from the street as possible. But I would also watch them like hawks to make sure they didn't run out in front of speeding cyclists, and I damn sure wouldn't allow the three dogs I was walking to completely obstruct the path. I admit to taking some pleasure in scaring oblivious people as I zip past them with six inches to spare at 15 MPH. My "scare them straight" plan backfired once when a large man took an unexpected step to the left and I hit him and bounced into the grass. I was unhurt, he was unhurt, and he was not angry and apologized (which was lucky for me given his size).

My anger at A-holes had remained internal, however, until I had verbal altercations with two of them this week. The first guy, a "biker", was riding his Magna (Huffy) around in circles in a street while talking on a cell phone. As I passed him and turned onto the bike path, he decided to also turn onto the bike path, and clipped my back tire which almost caused him to wipe out. I just looked back and kept riding. He caught up to me at a stoplight and said (start Puerto Rican accented font) "So you just hit somebody on the street and don't say no sorry no nothing?" (end Puerto Rican accented font) I told him that it was him who had hit me, since bikes don't come with reverse. He mumbled some vague tough guy threats which caused me to laugh at him. He mumbled some more vague tough guy threats centering around something or other not being so funny once he kicked my ass, but then took off riding down the sidewalk in true tough guy fashion. I wondered if he'd be waiting for me the next day but he wasn't, wasting an awesome "I don't really want to fight you but if you insist upon it I will bring the full force of my high school wrestling experience to bear on your ass" speech. Trust me, it was epic.

The next day I was riding in a block-long stretch of road where the asphalt right next to the curb is a mess, a real cyclist deathtrap. So for one block I rode four feet out in the lane. After I'd passed the bad stretch and moved over as far as I could, some A-hole (also in a SUV) passed me and yelled "Ride on the F-in side!" at me. Flush with tough guy vinegar and piss from the day before, I caught up to him at a stoplight and knocked on his window. Also in true tough guy fashion, he didn't want to roll it down. Finally he did and I calmly explained that the condition of the road in that small stretch is terrible and that it is too dangerous to ride on the far right edge. He looked sullen but didn't say anything back. I was wondering what he'd do if and when he passed me again but he never did. I know I shouldn't start anything with anybody in the event that the person is an actual tough guy, or worse, a coward with a pistol but sometimes I can't help it.

The strange thing about biking and the stress in induces is that it doesn't produce any of the somatic changes normally associated with frustration. Something about the physical exercise prevents the white knuckle, vein popping response I get on the rare occasion I drive in rush hour traffic. Maybe it's because my BP is already elevated and my palms sweaty. In any case, I can be riding along wishing butt herpes on a motorist's children and their children's children and still be totally calm. It's a very strange zen-like anger. Someone should do a study. Maybe A-holes are just exercise deprived.