Chasing Shiny Pennies

Liz’s granddaughter took the picture you see. She titled it “First Day at School”. And we set off. Three and a half hour fight to JFK, three-ish hour layover there (I had set it up that way because I’d never been to that airport and was unsure how they handled plane changes with international passengers) it turns out we would have been fine with a 1 hour layover. Then six and a half over the Atlantic. Liz caught a couple of hours, I didn’t sleep at all. At the end of that 6 1/2 hours, as Liz was trying to get semi-prepared for disembarking, she started gathering things up. She struggled. I noticed her trying to pick things up with her feet or move things over so that she could reach them. You can’t bend forward at the waist and reach the floor (deck?) of an airplane. When I saw her struggling, I bent over and grabbed it like a cat grabbing a mouse. I was sitting across the aisle…intentionally, everything is great (well, at least goodish). She started gathering things in her lap. Now, for me at this point in a flight, I’ve got my minimalist load corralled and I’m running through my moves for when we touch down and arrive at the gate. Liz is looking like a hoarder who just scored a load at a garage sale and has to carry it home with no container. Things start dribbling off her lap as she tried (vainly) to compel her feet to do her bidding. I was picking things up as she moved them within reach and putting them in her lap. They would promptly slide off again. At one point the guy sitting behind me started picking things up and giving them to Liz. She was giggling the whole time.

We breezed through immigration/customs, paused to catch our breath and headed to the car rental counter. Got the car rented and headed to the parking spot as instructed by the rental agent. This guy was really nice but he gave me a key in a scribbled on AVIS envelope a bunch of verbal instructions (my hearing aid was out of juice by that point), and no printed contract. Liz was over napping and protecting our luggage from hoodlums so was unable to hear what I couldn’t. So we started schlepping our luggage to the car…let me just pause at this point and say that I had mentioned to Liz (on numerous occasions) that she had an awful lot of stuff she was taking. I explained that where we were traveling would preclude the availability of certain service personnel. I just pack light. I don’t want to pay someone to carry my bags just because I can’t live without my 600 piece Snapon ratchet tool set.

This is turning into a longer screed than I envisioned but….I’ve had no sleep and a touch of Irish Whiskey.

So, anyway, she’s taking her hair dryer. I assured her that every place we were going to stay had a hair dryer available. She needed hers. I looked at the plug transformer. It was going to need a voltage converter to run in Europe. She bought one. I kept seeing those lbs add up. So, we’re schlepping the luggage to the car that was supposedly in the near vicinity of where I was told to look for it. The luggage was heavy, I was carrying both of Liz’s backpacks, one checked and one carry on. I gave her my backpack and my personal item. I was acting as her sherpa and she was carrying my lunchbox to school for me. I’ll add here (out of order) that while walking the 8 1/2 miles (in Dublin) from the international terminal we had been dropped off in to the customs reception area, I had walked up 3 flight of stairs, Liz saw the escalator and went up it. She had this big smile on her face when we both got to the top. I was too winded to even tease her about it. Anyway, we get to the parking garage with the rental cars and spend a full 30 minutes walking around in 40 degree temps, me toting my mountainous load, and Liz skipping along with her lunchbox. I finally found someone (who didn’t work for AVIS), explained the situation and he said (in an Irish accent!!!) “Yeah, they’re two different companies but affiliated, go look for the blue pillars.” (imagine an Irish accented voice). They’d (AVIS and the rental agent) laid a bunch of mouse turd clues along the way that if I had taken the time to stop and look at everything we surely would have zoomed in on the rental like a heat seeking missile (it’s not really my fault though, Liz was in pursuit of shiny pennies!!). We found the car, loaded our crap, and headed out. That’s where my part of this most excellent 2 days comes in (it really has been most excellent, stories like this make you forget the fretting).

Right hand drive vehicle. I knew that going in. The first thing I do is (I found the car while Liz was a ways away), open the driver side door (US driver side) and sit down, it took me all of 45 seconds to recognize my mistake. Now, 45 seconds may not seem like a lot when you read it, but….I had time for the following thoughts…Excellent, there’s great leg room (I like my legs full stretch when driving long distances); wow, there’s more room than normal in here; where’s the steering wheel?? Seriously, my THIRD thought was – Where’s the steering wheel? At which point I looked over to our (US) passenger side and found the lost steering wheel. By the time Liz got to the car, wrangling my lunch box, I was sitting in the actual drivers side of the vehicle pretending that everything was under control.

So we set out. LIz said there was a bank for foreign exchange “..right across the street”. Uh huh. After 2 failed attempts at finding the exit from the rental car garage, I managed to make our escape. We found that bank “right across the street” after the following events: the previously mentioned escape failure; driving several miles in a circuitous route; me listening to both Liz and the google maps voice give me driving instructions (simultaneously); negotiating numerous (in the hundreds) round-a-bouts; having to make several u-turns due to wrong turns at the round-a-bouts; going around at least 2 round-a-bouts twice before I managed to escape; me turning from the driving lane (our left hand lane) into the on-coming traffic lane (also our left hand lane); my exhaustion even recounting this escapade; parking in a paid parking lot (but not paying); walking lots of blocks (in the rain and numbing cold and hurricane force winds {only Category 1 though}) to a Bank of Ireland branch only to be told that “..sure we’ll exchange your $ for euros, if you’re an account holder” (also in an Irish accent!!); following the vague and barely heard instructions of that same kind lady telling us where we could go to exchange our dollars for euros; realizing that we had parked in a paid lot and not paid (unintentionally, when you’re sleep deprived, realization comes somewhat slowly); walking for many, many more blocks in the rain and vicious cold, and slashing wind, before deciding to rescue the rental car before it was towed (doubtful due to severe lack of maneuvering room in their common lots) or booted due to unpaid parking fees (actually we went back to pay the fee only to discover that only cash was accepted…we had none); then trying again to find the FX place; passing accidentally by a grocery store in a mall; me deciding we’d delay the clearly futile search for FX and get a few things at the grocery store; and finally, discovering that the mall where the grocery store was located was also the location of the FX (sometimes, the universe takes care of us). So we scored some cash, stocked up on a few victuals and hit the road to our first destination, Ballyliffin; a 3 1/2 hour drive northwest of Dublin.

The drive was relatively uneventful. I made a couple of wrong turns off round-a-bouts and had to correct them. It rained most of the way except in higher elevations where it had already snowed and was continuing with either a light mist or occasional snow flurries. Many of the roads are much narrower than in the US. Their equivalent to interstate highways are much the same as the US, but what I would call the secondary highways are maybe the equivalent of state highways but with less shoulder and occasional round-a-bouts sprinkled around randomly. Their tertiary road system is somewhat frightening to drive and would be the equivalent of Texas’ FM or RM road system in use but not in configuration. These roads, which at this point seem to have been all designated with names like R238 (I Googled it, the R stands for risky) or A130 (accident waiting to happen, Google again). Like the RM and FM roads they serve the small towns and villages, they are two lane roads and have very occasional passing lanes in hilly areas and the speed limits are similar. Unlike the RM and FM roads, they have no (as in ZERO) shoulder. The lack of shoulder is compounded by the fact that unlike Texas rural highways, the wide open spaces between small towns is not expansive and even when you are between towns, it’s not like TXDOT and utility companies have acquired a substantial easement to compensate for the lack of shoulder. To the contrary, almost the entire way, there were stone walls or hedgerows within inches of the passenger side (US driver side) of the car. Not only that, but they have curbs with odd placement criteria (by my estimation anyway). I don’t know who is in charge of curbs here but my suggestion would be …towns only!!! I curbed the passenger side (US driver side) tires THREE times on the last quarter of the trip. I’ve never curbed a tire in my life! It happened at speed too (80 KMH), not in a parking lot. I’ve developed a contingency plan, if we experience a flat tire on one of these roads; I plan to sherpa my mountainous load cross-country (as Liz totes my lunchbox) to the nearest sheep farm and stop this foolishness of driving completely. Another major difference is that these roads have an absolute multitude of round-a-bouts. It seemed that every 3 or 4 miles we were slowing down and Liz was patiently repeating things like “….take the second exit.” and reminding me to stay in the left-hand lane. I’ve decided that Liz has been faking this whole anxiety thing, no one with anxiety can possibly remain calm on these roads. It is possible, though, that by the time we began experiencing these roads we were both mostly somnambulent, so there’s that. Additionally, the semi truck traffic (or lorry, its all the same, death coming at you from the wrong lane) is much heavier here then on the RM/FM network. The other major difference is that there are no long, clear stretches where you can see ahead for 10 miles on a clear day (which may not exist here anyway {both geographically and weatherwise}), see no traffic, or light traffic ahead and relax for a few minutes. There is no relaxing on these roads, only fearful anticipation of the next on-coming lorry. PLUS, there are no long, straight stretches only blind corners (verging on switchbacks) and blind hills (and round-a-bouts). On the upside, there are Circle K’s here.

We made it alive and uninjured in body. We met the host which is an encounter worthy of a separate installment. Though much, much shorter. Maybe we’ll relate it at a WW.

Also, I have been unable to activate comments on these pages, sorry.