The first of October

I just spoke with a very confused hostel clerk who has confirmed my bike is still chained to a fence and unharmed. Time to head to the south east to get 'GO!'.

In the Aeroplane Over The Sea.

I sit at the airport, thinking of NYC and resuming life as we know it. Waiting & listening to Willie Nelson:

Look around you, take a good look.

Just between you and me, are you sure this is where you want to be?

I sit in the airport waiting, waiting on a plane that will take me back across the sea. I think about the trip as a whole, how nervous I was to do it alone, how many new & different people i met, and how it paid off to be more enjoyable than I ever imagined. I felt re-awakened. Not since Paris over 3 years ago could I remember feeling anything close to this. It was back. A dormant ability roused.

I sit at the airport waiting for a plane to take me to New York City. I look forward to it. I have a lot of packing to do.

The Queen & the Pawn

Yesterday I bummed around town, coffee shops, harry potter at the cinema, and having a pint while watching the races on TV. Mostly just trying to keep out of the full day of rain, I captured a couple shots around town, one is the automatic toilets... which isn't very interesting I suppose but it felt like I was in star wars in that thing with the automatic doors and all the giant LED light buttons.

It was a slow day, and I spent lunch at at tributary to the corrib where there is a café built on the waters edge. At one point it was so bad out that the swans were being blown across the water faster than they could swim.

I went out with Susan, Caroline, Marie, Anne-Marie(all pictured in that order), and several other people that came & went through the night; brian & Carmel, and one other girl who I didn't get the name of. This is a picture of us on Quay Street trying to get through the business and decide where to go for dancing.

Oh, and we switched pubs for a bit to see Tara at the townhouse (pictured). I also snapped a few shots of Quay Street, despite the endless rain all day it was still packed outside.

Random shots of the street at night:

We went to the Spanish Arch hotel to do some dancing but it was too busy to hardly move, so we had some drinks and then went back to Marie’s house when it closed. It poured so bad that on the way we had to stop at the door of Jury’s Inn(pictured).

Marie had a great music selection, and by great I mean that it was 90% of things I own & love listening to: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Mirah, Pogues etc etc. She destroyed me in chess due to a queen being lost early, and I fell asleep on her couch for a bit before going home (pictured). Antics apparently ensued with my camera(pictured with silly faces & all), apparently i passed out in the spot i had been playing chess at directly on Susan and proceeded to snore so loud that no one could talk. I awoke to a taxi waiting for me. I awoke this morning to realize my camera was still at Marie's, but there were some chess pieces accidently taken home which needed returned to her, a queen & a pawn.

Marie had been asking me why I like Galway so much, I wasn't able to formulate much at the time as I was minutes from passing out as shown. It's fair to say I'm in no way in love with the town. I guess there is just something that draws you to each different city you like. Boston I love for a good city to live & work in, in general. Paris, best city on earth, really no reason to ask why. Cleveland, I loved my friends from college. New York, great place, good friends & so much to do, but no where I could see me staying long. Galway is some combination of all of those, its the friendliness (more so even) of the midwest, the cafe life of paris, friends easily to be found, the small town atmosphere of PA, the environmental beauty of Scotland, and still the excitement & fun to be had like New York to a reasonable extent. Still with those reasons alone, I don't think that is any reasonable defense for why someone should want to go through all the hard work to move there... thats simply what I like about it.

Tropic of Cancer ends as such:

The sun is setting. I feel this river flowing through me - its past, its ancient soil, the changing climate. The hills gently girdle it about: its course is fixed.

Eolas Cuartaíochta

I awoke early on Thursday, to a gloomy looking morning, such a difference than the previous day which felt about as tropical as it gets here. It was 8:30 and the sun had come up much earlier, but regardless I decided to go out to Galway Bay to watch the sun rise over the water. I had been relaxing on the benches at the Salt Hill Prom, with my $5 imitation Ray-Ban’s purchased from some Jamaican dude in Park Slope on the 4^th of July, and wearing a white collared shirt. I became distracted from watching the scenery when I noticed the scenery had started to watch me, a girl had passed by me three or four times now with wide eyes. The final time she passed I could tell she was going to come up, and she did with this giant grin to ask me something which was way to fast for me to understand with her thicker accent. Asking her to repeat it, she said a bit more slowly “don’t think I’m crazy. Are you the I-102.4 thief?” Telling her no, I was then slightly less shocked when a portly gentleman began pacing around me looking me up and down, before finally coming up and asking the same question. He explained that it was a radio promo

and that the “Thief” was supposed to be dressed similarly to me, slightly dressy with sunglasses apparently. After another person asked me the same thing, I realized I wasn’t going to get to watch the sun in peace, and also assumed that there must be a prize for this thief so I walked the entire prom looking for the I-102.4s thief, and found nothing but another person that thought it was I.

Walking into town I found an unkempt boat on the swan landing (pictured), and headed up Quay Street to find some breakfast. After a search up all the way through shop street , down bridge, and looping through the Claddaugh, I decided to return to the busiest place I had seen on Quay street, assuming they would have the best Irish breakfast. I was wrong, the rashers & sausage were ok, but the beans were canned and the puddings were out of a package and microwaved for sure. I burned through another 25 pages of War & Peace, making Tolstoy the best part of my breakfast.

Unsure of what to do next I went to my old hostel across the street and read the paper, and looked through my pictures of the previous day at dog’s bay. While it wasn’t exciting to write about, it was probably my favorite day of the past year. Really relaxing. As 2pm approached, the sun was blazing, and I decided it was time to head to the races so I went up to Eyre square to catch the bus. The Gentleman of the Western Reserve song “Horse Race Jubilee” was in my head as I queued up with the other 500 people, really coincidental lyrics. “T’was the 30^th o’ July and fair, as carriages drove into town square.” I was off to Ballybrit & the famous Galway Races which I’ve heard about only through the writings of Yeats & the Dubliners.

Today was Ladies day (pictured) at the races, and there was just over 20,000 in attendance, nearly every guy dressed in a suit and ever woman in a fancy hat & gúna (yeah, that’s right I’m learning irish! 1 word at a time.) First thing was first, I went to the beer tent and had myself a drink and watched the first race on the large screen. Some old Irishmen decided to strike up a conversation with me between stuffing their faces with the hot beef rolls. The talk mostly revolved around me asking what they said a million times and them telling me how great Obama was. Which surprised me a bit, since my old buddy from Wexford, Jim, had some awful joke about Obama which made me think the older guys might be racist here, it went like… “I always said there would be a black president when pigs fly. Well, now we got swine flu.”... among other equally classy racist jokes Jim had.

I decided to place some bets and went to the betting booths but couldn’t really figure out what the hell I was doing, so I just went up to the front row to watch the races. After watching several, I found an automatic betting machine and tried to figure it out and some girls helped me out by telling me I had to wait in some long line to get a ticket. In that line I chatted with two guys next to me and had the tip that Deutschland (a horse from the US) was favored better at this inside betting than outside and bound to win. So I took my entire cash allowance for betting, a mighty 10euro and threw it all down on him to come in first. Well, he came in second. I stuck around until the second to last race getting some good pics from trackside.

Back in town, literally in the 200 meter walk through eyre square, I was asked at LEAST 5 more times if I was the I-102.4 thief, which Susan later explained to me that he is American too, so I’m sure that confused people when I said I wasn’t with my accent & dressed like him. The Garda had barricaded off Shop Street and had police checkpoints. The town gets nuts during this period, and they basically turn the entire street into an open bar with barricades to keep bottles & under 18 y.o.’s out. I couldn’t even get halfway down the street before I was annoyed by the drunks, and took a sidestreet off to get some dinner alone. Chorizo & carmalized onion pizza for my birthday meal! Then I went down to the Spanish arch and fell asleep people-watching in the grass. Waking up to my now good Galwegian friend Susan calling. She came into city center to meet for a drink, and there was talk of meeting up with her sisters in town but everyone was spread out at the far edges and getting through the center was almost undoable with the rowdy crowds. So we had some drinks at Jury’s before the drunks literally overwhelmed the security guy there, who were pouring in to use restrooms and yell at the staff (at least one very angry guy in particular was making no sense trying to hand out his own money…?) We ended up at Salt House Pub to finish celebrating my 32nd. Tomorrow I’ll have to get pictures of the insanity that is Quay Street during the races.

PS – thanks to all the facebook happy b’days, especially Nesson, that was really sweet of you.

The Dog's Bay Excursion

Wednesday I left for the coastline to the west. Riding through the lower area of the Connemara and then turning south to roundstone I got some lovely pictures. The last one I took is the first one I'll start with (pictured to the right) of the sun setting, if you enlarge it you can see the rays jutting out between the trees and the mountain-side.

I walked around the town of roundstone, that Tara had suggested seeing the other night. It was really small as shown below with the bay to it's left. I also stopped for some scenic pics in the afternoon:

By early afternoon, I'd arrived at Dog's bay. A small sea inlet that was shetlered by a small piece of land that spiraled out into the bay. The sand was pure white, and with the sun out it created crystal clear water that sparkled in the sunlight along with the sand. Despite the wind, it was reasonably warm outside, though the water was actually warmer (or so it felt). I stripped down on the beach, threw on a pair of boxers and went for a swim. It felt like the arctic getting into it, but once it the water was really refreshing. I took a dive and had forgotten that it was the atlantic, coming up with salt in my eyes. For a while i just floated around and lost track of time while avoiding the jellyfish.

There were cows that wandered on and off of the beach, and I walked around the surrounding hills to photo them and the countryside:

I meant to meet Marie at the Crane for some traditional music, but she had some unexpected family stop in and I couldn't get to the bar they were at. I was nearly worn out myself from the sun & salt, so i went to bed at a reasonable hour for the first time this week. Taking it easy in anticipation of the 30th; I'd planned to stop by the recruiters in town, get a good healthy breakfast, and go off to the Galway Races to bet on any horse that coincided with 32 for my bday.

Tropic of Cancer

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience. I've had Henry Miller on my mind quite a bit recently, I wondered if he had a plan at all and threw it by the wayside as it suited him. Small coincidences in life seem to lead to large outcomes.

Sonja texted me saturday morning for breakfast, and as I was only on my second cup of morning tea I went to Amnesty to meet her for my first cup of coffee. Afterwards she showed me around to several second hand stores in town, hoping I could find something to wear to the wedding that was affordable. Obviously in my light & disposable packing for the bike trip, formal wear was not something i had brought. Who knows, maybe it would have a dual use if I stuck around a couple more days to drop a CV or two in town.

I found a quality white shirt that was just slightly bigger than my size, but acceptable. I split from Sonja to relax at the Hostel for a bit and found my new topshop shirt had been stolen or taken with the bedsheets. So I went out shopping later in the week to rebuy it, but for today all I got was a new belt from Topshop, shoes from Dunnes, and a remarkably nice pair of pants despite them being from Penney's.

I was really nervous for the wedding. Here I am, a foreigner, in a foreign land, going out into the midlands.. where on my bike trip I could hardly understand them in the southern midlands, and going to have to meet someone's family at a wedding. What would they think, having some transient american biker showing up to their wedding? Luckily, they were very hospitable and when Susan was off talking to people, her sisters (Linda & Tara) and cousins (Keith & another fellow that i forget) kept me busy chatting away. I even got pulled into dancing with their mother, who was known to be quite a dancer. I learned, ok maybe not learned, i tried to mimic her mom (Mary) doing a traditional irish dance called 'Jive' (pictured). I danced like I had a pegleg and a club foot, but no one seemed to mind except me and it was fun none-the-less. The wedding ended fairly late, and i was surprised to see that the afterparty was to go on until near sunrise, though we all left slightly prior to that.

Sunday through Tuesday were mostly nothing new in terms of who to see & what settings. Sunday I spent the afternoon with the French family, having dinner and bottle of wine with them which they drank out of something like shot glasses, mind you the daughters are 17 & 15 but that didn't stop them from having wine with dinner. It was comfortable for me though, since I was able to relax a bit more being the third time I had eaten with them and now with a little wine I was able to talk in French & mess-up talking in French with relative comfort. Wrong tenses, having to say one or two words here and there in english? No sweat, it was a good time and I could tell the girls had eased up speaking english to me as well. That night I watched Milk & just relaxed inside during the thunderstorm.

Monday I did some shopping, and spent the night out with a nice fish pie for dinner and creme brulee for desert, my favorite. Afterwards I went to the Front Door for the first time since I'd been at the end of august last year with Petra, it was still the same packed, loud, hot, and at the same time fun establishment.

Tuesday, I was invited to a dinner with the Whyte's (susan's family) that her youngest sister, Tara had stirred up plans for during the wedding. I took the shot (pictured above) as we drove there. I was a bit nervous hanging out with someones family again but once again they were super to be around and very welcoming. There was a three course meal, goat cheese bread appetizer, baked pesto salmon entree, and followed with dessert that I had bought from my favorite tart company here. I had missed having those since last year and was happy to have an excuse to get them (pictured in my Hostel window).

The courses had finally ended and I was stuffed! Having a bit too much of just about everything, including the wine which I'm not really use to drinking, I was sitting back relaxing when they surprised me with a Scooby-Doo cake for my thirty second birthday, card & all! I think my jaw must have dropped when I saw that, totally didn't expect it from people I had just recently met, and two days before my birthday even.

Linda snapped this shot of me blowing out the candles during my birthday wish. Henry Miller's words had switched to the Killer's song "Human" playing on the radio during the way over.

And sometimes I get nervous

when I see an open door

close your eyes, clear your heart

cut the cord

The Beach & The Crane, c'était un bon soir.

Friday morning was my first morning in my new hostel, barnacles, right in the heart of the pubs on Quay Street. I gave the Galwegians a lecture on phonetics of how to pronounce the street name, and learned the next day that i was completely wrong, oops. Barnacles was a large hostel, and in the morning I went down to the picnic area style kitchen for some toast & tea. There i met 2 primary school teachers on holiday from the Nottingham (Ravienda (sp) & Julie), and a girl from switzerland (Sonja) who had just completed her culinary schooling and was sticking around Galway a bit to tour the Burren.

Everyone had been talking about what they were up to for the day, and since I didn't have any plans for the day except maybe calling up marie to see if she wanted to play chess later the two teachers asked me to be their tour guide since they weren't sure how to get to the salt hill promenade. So we walked up coastline that i used to jog every day last year, there I got photos of the sea life at low tide, the great beaches, and the "green dragon" which was the boat(pictured) that ireland had in the volvo around-the-world race.

It rained 3 times during our walk, which wasn't so bad except one downpour was remarkably heavy and we had to run in from inspecting a dead crab on the beach to hide in a coffee shop. While there we ate a lunch, which for me was my first full irish breakfast (yeah!). I made Ravienda try the black pudding, and she had a horrible face on but admited it was tasty, yet another convert.

From there we went to get a pint and were off to the free exhibition showing photography, painting, and commissioned work from Absolut Vodka at the Arts Festival. The photography was really intense since it was all based on child warfare, with some extremely graphic (decapitation or shot & dying) photos. I didn't photograph that, but don't suspect that I'll be forgetting it anytime soon.

That evening I ate dinner in the hostel, trying to conserve money for once and make some pasta. I gave Sonja a hard time earlier that day because as a recent culinary graduate she was eating pasta with no sauce for breakfast. As i was waiting for my food to cook i was working on the blog, when the people next to me asked in some really broken english if i wanted their extra food. I tried to explain that I was cooking but i'm not sure if she really understood, so I accepted. They turned out to be from Strasbourg France, and the Father who had just came back spoke decent english. His one daughter was able to say simple sentences and the only french. My food finished and we all shared the various dishes, me speaking in french, and the two of them that could in english because the father really wanted his daughter(s) to practice it and it was good practice for me as well. I had plans to meet sonja at the Crane, assuming they'd have some traditional music on tonight, so I invited the French family to come with me. There was an irish/swedish/american bluegrass mixed band that night, which played mostly covers of other country & bluegrass, which was not what I expected but it was still a good night.

Photos:

1 - the band at the Crane

2 - The french family: Marie, Roland, et Julie

3 - Sonja & I

Susan texted me that night and asked me to come to a Wedding the next day, all the way back towards Dublin and a bit north. Her mom had been guilt tripping her into going, and now it appears I was being sucked into the guilt trip too, but I was excited to go, this trip was unpredictable to this point, and why should it stop?