Bike is GOne

The alarm shook me out of bed, and I was excited to be off. Maybe relief that I could sit on a real seat today, maybe to be back towards Galway, and maybe for Bon Iver. I took a picture of my sun-burned feet (pictured) and jumped on the bus to Dublin. At Dublin I decided to skip taking the next bus and spend a couple hours in the city. I found the bicycle redlight an appropriate photo opportunity (pictured). Up until this point I had been running on “disposable” clothing that I had been throwing away each day, all of which I bought from the 3euro or less racks at penney’s. The biking was done, and the need to travel lightly so I headed downtown to shop. On my way there I got some good pictures of downtown:

I ate a sullen lunch on the sidewalk by the river Liffey. Not much had reminded me of last year until Dublin for some reason, but sitting alongside the river and listening to Bon Iver started to remind me of the last time I was in Dublin, for my birthday last year with Megan. Which I’m not sure if I’d classify as good memories or not. I searched Grafton Street for some new clothes but my heart wasn’t in it and carrying my heavy bags made me decide to eventually turn back to the bus station and make for the west coast.

I arrived in Galway in late afternoon, bought my tickets for Bon Iver, checked into my hostel, and bought some decent clothes at Top Man. Marie had talked Susan into going to Bon Iver, and I went to meet them both at Kelly’s Pub. They had a friend from work named “Caoimhe”, which is pronounced as Queeva…. Yeah, I don’t get gaelic phonetics. Like how Galway is written Gaillimh, it’s beyond me. We decided to forgo the opening band and Marie bought a round of drinks instead. Then off to Bon Iver and a few drinks at Massimo afterwards (pictured). Bon Iver was incredible, for an album that has so many overdubbed tracks he did a great job of either getting the crowd to substitute for the overdubbed vocals, or making some pretty interesting sounds and loops with the effects pedals each member of the band had.

Bon Iver’s skinny love rattled around in my head on the busride:

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
In the morning I'll be with you
But it will be a different "kind"
I'll be holding all the tickets
And you'll be owning all the fines