Hitting the Ground Running

Lough Key (means Lake Key, pronounced Lock Key—funny, right?)


The first day in Ireland. It could have been spent resting from the red-eye flight that put me down in Dublin at 7:30am after only 3 hours of sleep. Instead, I hit the road. However, I almost couldn’t get on the road. My piece of plastic evidently has a limit on daily purchasing, so I couldn’t rent the car I reserved. Luckily, I was flying with one of the other RWs, Kyle Dalton, and she bailed me out. It was about 3am Cambridge time, so I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise get help for many more hours. First disaster averted.

So I get on the road for a couple hour drive to the northwestern counties. The weather was perfect—sunny and upper 70s. Following highway signs and driving on the left side was not as difficult as I expected. Soon I was rocking out to some Irish newstalk radio about everything from immigrant representation in the Senate to inflation to John Barry’s movie soundtracks to Ireland’s attempt at forming a legit cricket team. Dublin doesn’t have very beautiful scenery, but when I got out a little way, all of a sudden I come around a bend and this gorgeous lake is staring at me. I had the “I’m in freakin Ireland” moment. Then people got angry cause I was driving too slowly. It feels funny to look at the speedometer when the needle is at 120.

Ok, of few other quick things that were funny:

There were all these signs on the road that said “Warning! Plant Crossing!” Watch out! Plants tend to bolt across the highway at any moment over here on the Emerald Isle.

The old tourist lady in the small town I’m staying in flirted with me. We made out then she gave me some free pamphlets.

Two really nice B&B owners chatted with me, found out I’m from Texas, and laughed at Bush with me.

I ate dinner at a pub. It was pretty, but there was a short playlist of female top 40 pop songs on loop (Think “Since you been gone” over and over again).

I am absolutely exhausted. I need some sleep. It feels like I’ve been awake for two days. Sure, hostels are cheap, but I’m staying at a B&B tonight and getting a home-cooked breakfast in the morning. This is going to be a lot of work, but also a little fun. I’ll also be writing blogs and then posting them a day or two later because I will only have Internet access when I hit up cafes or libraries, so pardon if I write in the present tense about things that happened days ago. Over and out.

The next morning…
At breakfast this morning (it was enormous—food coma time), I chatted with a couple from Dublin doing a little golf vacationing. They really liked hearing me ramble on about America. Then the nice owner of the house was trying to let me connect to her wireless Internet. I feel bad that it was such a trouble for her, but she eventually found the right password. So thank her for this post. Time to go see nature.