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.