Tirty Tree

Yeah, yeah. Ireland’s green and beautiful and the people are incredibly friendly, blah blah blah. The most important thing Susan and I learned on our 3 day adventure to Erin is that the worst names for our unborn children are: Shannon Anna Anenberg and Egg Wolk.

I think this might be funnier if I just elaborate on all the notes I took instead of trying to form a coherent, flowing recap. (Plus, it’s less work for me.)

- First, a totally unrelated-to-Ireland Susan quote. (Not 30 seconds into our walk around Hyde Park on her first day in London) “I have a cramp.”
- Things not to shout at an airport to emphasize the smallness of the prop plane you’re about to board: “Shotgun!”
- So we’re on said prop plane and about to touch down at Galway airport. I couldn’t even finish asking Susan “We’re going awfully fast, aren’t we?” when the plane all but dropped onto the runway and lurched us from our seats. Susan thinks it was at this ‘last moment on Earth’ that I grabbed her hand. Truth be told, I was reaching for the damn armrest to hold on for dear life.
- By far the greatest thing I did on the trip was ask the Budget rental car man if he wanted to give us a free upgrade to an automatic. When he agreed to do it for an extra 5 Euros a day, we thanked him profusely and told him he was doing both us and himself a favor. I don’t think he understood.
- I almost hit a girl walking on the side of the road at night.
- I DID hit a parked car in broad daylight.
- Susan: “Aaaaaaaaand you’re on the curb.”
- I would report back on the number of times Susan yelled ‘Ohmygod’ and grabbed the Oh Shit bar or screamed ‘Too close! Too close!’ (referring to my proximity to the left side of the road) while I drove, but I stopped counting at 42.
- We drove 1400 kilometers in 3 days.
- I finally got to watch a hurling match on television. That is one dangerous sport.
- I have no shame. We stayed in a double bed at our first B+B. Susan was lying in bed looking at the map and trying to figure out our route for the next day when I decided now would be the best time to clip my fingernails. Despite her look of utter disgust and insistence that I do it in a more appropriate place like the bathroom, I figured she needed to be exposed to what married life will bring so I stood my ground and assured her I would keep track of all the nails. Halfway through clipping, I start giggling uncontrollably and she says, “I think we should drive up towards you lost one, didn’t you?” I just kept laughing because I couldn’t breathe enough to say yes.
- We had a hard time finding an open pub at 8:30 pm in Kenmare that also had good fare and reasonable prices. We walked into our last viable option and saw a man with the World’s Most Obvious Wig on his head sitting alone at the end of the bar looking at us expectedly. So I say, “Hi. Are you still serving food?” That’s when the bartender came out of the back room and the man gave us a judging look and returned his gaze to the newspaper in front of him. (I’ll send a picture of him soon…)
- When I asked our B+B host if she could make us potatoes instead of bacon and sausage for breakfast, she looked at us as though I had asked for barbecued children. Am I way off base in assuming potatoes are a common Irish food that might be served as a delicious breakfast dish? (Please note that Susan forced me to change ‘we’ to ‘I’ in this story saying, “Don’t make this about me.”)
- We told our second B+B host that we wanted scrambled eggs and when he brought us our toast first, he said, “We’ve caught the chicken, so we’re on target.” (This guy was both hilarious and amazing. He had a coffee table book called ‘World’s Best Mother-In-Law Jokes” and a framed picture of his dog sitting on an armchair.)
- So I’m driving on some scary-ass road bordering a cliff in Nowhere, Ireland when it starts to rain buckets. We’re fearing for our lives when I see a branch in the middle of the road and exclaim, “Oooh! Branch!” and run right over it. Susan says, “Hey, you know what we need right now?” “What?” “A flat tire.”
- The sheep in Ireland (all 5,000,000 of them) are so cute I could just eat them. So I did. And oh boy were they delicious!
- You remember that scene in Spinal Tap when Nigel and the band are expecting this huge, imposing Stonehenge model to come down from the ceiling and land on the stage but instead it’s this one-foot-tall rinky dink little monument? That’s EXACTLY what the Burren was like.
- Life advice #414: If you are in Ireland and you think there’s something wrong with the shower’s hot water, don’t complain to the inn owners. Just pull the string that’s hanging down from the ceiling; it’s the hot water pump, not one of those emergency showers from 9th grade chemistry lab like you thought it was.
- In my humble opinion, it is much better and more efficient to drive over rotaries instead of around them.
- Susan thinks it’s funny that I said “I can’t stand people who drive 80 kph in a 100 kph zone” because she claims that was me for the first two days of our trip. I don’t agree.
- Ireland must have gotten a really good bulk deal on ‘100 kph’ speed limit signs. The limit was 100 kph regardless of whether I was driving on an open highway or taking ridiculously tight turns around a cliff where it was physically impossible to go more than 40 kph. Seriously, Ireland. What’s the deal with this?
- Our trip, while amazing and fun and funny and memorable, included two of my life’s scariest moments so far. The first one happened as we were on our way to the Cliffs of Moher, a must-see sight recommended by everyone and their mothers (and also known as the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride). I had been warned by numerous people not to go too close to the edge because it’s windy and there aren’t guardrails or barriers to prevent unsuspecting American tourists from being blown off (which HAS happened). Thinking we were invincible, Susan and I chose to not heed the advice of the locals when they told us a storm was coming and today would NOT be a good day for the cliffs. I’m driving up yet another twisty-turvy road (whose width could barely fit one car let alone two) and the wind is blowing insanely hard and it’s raining. I’m nervous about proceeding but Susan is all smiles and singing Vanessa Williams without a care in the world. I tell her I think maybe we should turn back because it’s REALLY windy and we’re not even at the top yet. It’s then that I pull over to the side of the road and say, “I really don’t think we should go any further.” She replies, “It’s not that…” but she couldn’t finish her sentence because our car had just been blown onto 2 wheels instead of 4. That’s when I stopped caring what she thought and got the hell out of Dodge. (So in the end, we didn’t get to see the cliffs, but at least we’re still alive. I think it’s a fair trade-off.)
The second scary-ass incident also had to do with driving. Ireland, while full of curvy, narrow roads, is completely devoid of streetlights. On our way back from dinner in Killarney one night, we took the route that went through Killarney National Park. Things that added to the horror-film level of fright I experienced that night: pitch darkness, Mulholland Drive types of curves, huge, looming boulders, being in the middle of nowhere with no cars, no houses, no buildings, and no people, and last but not least, Susan trying to ease my fears by telling me Ouji Board stories. The only thing that would have made for a scarier experience would have been coming upon a sheep in the road and having his beady red eyes stare me down.

Ireland was fun!