Trip to Ireland 2008

Part I

Wednesday, August 13th

When someone wins $25,000, they are expected to attend a friend’s wedding in Ireland.  The following excuse doesn’t hold much water:

“I’m a starving artist.  I can’t afford to fly over to Ireland.  Believe me, if I could starve my way over there, I would do it in a second.”

So, due to my well known earnings, there was no way for me to turn down my former college roommate Dara’s wedding invitation.  Of course, there was also the fact that it would be a wild honor to take part in my good buddy’s wedding.

In the morning, I called my doctor’s office.  I had been feeling sluggish the past few weeks and after three blood tests, he had some news to share with me.  It turns out I have Mono also known as “Kissing Disease”.  Sadly, some rudimentary math made it clear to me that I did not contract this sleepy disorder from any brutal make-out sessions (unless the incubation period for Mono is one year).  I don’t know how I got it but I’m sure it was in the lamest fashion possible.  When I wasn’t looking, some ant with Mono probably spit into my cereal.

Dr. Burns informed me that I could still leave on my trip, but I would not be allowed to drink or stay up late…and no horseplay!  That’s correct.  He actually wielded the serious medical term “horseplay” in our conversation.  Well thank goodness I was never really one to play with horses in the first place.  Their large size and terrible manners make them lousy playmates in the sandbox.  I think the only thing I was allowed to do was to sit under a tree and be sad. 

After this unsavory news, I picked up a check from my good chap Thomas in Dorchester and headed over to The Other Side Café in Boston to make lunch with a fella known as Dave Walsh.  He was back from LA to successfully propose to his lady Colleen.  With well-built sandwiches in front of us, we discussed the industry of professional laugh-making among other lighter matters.  To ensure proper digestion, we embarked on a chat-stroll through the Back Bay.  I bid farewell to this freshly engaged guy and he bid farewell to a historically single guy. 

Once home, I gathered my things and publicly transported myself to the airport.  I walked on to the plane and took my seat next to a lovely young woman whose name escapes me.  She had just finished her PhD in a biology-related field and was on her way to England to complete a five-year research project.  The purpose of this project would be to see how global climate change would affect plants.  I told her that global climate change would indeed affect plants and that she should save herself an expensive airfare and five years of her life and just stay home.  She did not comply so we were forced to exchange in more lovely conversation (lovely young woman = lovely conversation). 

Thursday, August 14th

Curse this flight for leaving Boston so early in the previous evening.  Due to the flight’s relatively short duration, I was now at Shannon Airport at 5:20 AM.  To be in a town with little activity in an airport on the decline at 5:20 AM in the morning is to bury your head in the sand in the Beach of Lost Hope.  All I could do was to stumble around these Halls of Boredom in a chocolaty daze until it was time to pick up my golf cart-sized rental car.  These cars keep getting smaller every time I rent one.  My Toyota Yaris was little more than two mopeds welded together, side by side.

The next part I love – a guy that drives automatic in America that has had no sleep now gets into a manual shift auto that requires left-handed shifting and drives on the left side of the road praying that his fatigued mind doesn’t lead him back to the right side of the road where oncoming bad times await him. 

Fortunately, I made it to my B&B (bed and breakfast) in O’Briensbridge, a small village outside of Limerick on the Shannon River.  This location was just 3-4 miles upriver from where the reception and ceremony would be in Castleconnell.  The name of my B&B was the Scapaflow House and it was run by the friendliest of ladies named Antoinette.  Even though I was massively early, she still took me in, cooked an Irish breakfast and let me have a room.

Are you familiar with an Irish breakfast, friend?  It contains a fried tomato, sausage, Irish bacon, eggs, brown bread and blood pudding.  Although blood pudding does indeed contain animal blood as a main ingredient, it is tasty.  Most B&B’s include this breakfast in their rates so I do feel compelled to tackle these deadly meals that even in a small fractional dose could give a Blue Whale a fatal heart attack.

After this diabolical feeding, I went upstairs and napped for a few hours.  As a precaution, I set an alarm so I didn’t sleep too far into the future…so far that I awoke to a world where the President was a bug…a lady bug!

I pulled myself out of such a deep sleep that it felt as though I was that very same lady bug president trying to pull herself out of a bed of flypaper.  But if I was truly this lady bug president, I would make a new decree that from this point forward, all female lady bugs will still call themselves lady bugs while male lady bugs will call themselves fella bugs.

I walked down to the Shannon River and decided to walk along a path on the river’s edge.  On my journey, I ran into this Turkish guy that was fishing with a rod so ridiculously long it looked like he stole a flag pole and attached a reel to it.  I don’t know if he was expecting to catch a saber tooth tiger or the entire year of 1989 in there but he seemed to have been over-equipped for this fishin’ mission.  Fishin’ mission!

Later on, I drove to Dara’s family house in Castleconnell for a grand dinner.  This beautiful old house built in the 1700’s was situated right on the Shannon River and would also be the site for Saturday’s reception. 

One of the first lads I ran into was another Boston College alum known to the world as Mark Francetic.  Along with his charmworthy wife, we soon found ourselves dangerously involved in a discussion about George Michael.  Mark told me about the concert of said performer that he recently attended and how he saw Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf.  I don’t know if it’s a prerequisite for tennis hall of famers to attend George Michael concerts.  Either way, it’s pretty weird.  Whipping caution into the wind with great force, I confessed my like of George Michael.  For Mark, he has a lovely wife to guard his image.  For a single, heterosexual male like myself, I must exist precariously and far out on the limb of this Wham Rap tree.

Along with his fiancée Christine, Dara appeared finally at the house, as he was delayed by an afternoon pub experience.  It was great to see the guy and even better to enjoy my introduction he gave to his other friends and family members.

“You see this guy!  He just won 25 grand by dancing in his underwear!!”

I looked around the party and it was loaded with people that were loaded and it made me laugh that among a crowd of people where 25 grand is what they would spend for fancy pants, they still were amazed at my absurd accomplishment.

Also floating around the dinner party was Chris Barous.  Chris is a good friend of Dara’s from San Francisco and dynamically appears in my 2004 San Francisco journal.  We reviewed the more noteworthy contents of our lives over the past four years and joined the rest of the group on a walk to Guerin’s pub.  Here I bathed in fine conversation, traditional music and against my doctor’s orders, one pint of precise Guinness.

I did, however, abide my doctor’s advice of getting to bed somewhat early so I left the pub by 11:00 PM and restored myself with sleep.  Good night, children.

PART II