Trip to Scotland and Ireland

Part VI

Tuesday, August 28th

After a beast of a breakfast, I rode my bike along the coast rode, stopping along the way to see old churches, beaches and even seals.  When coming across a beach with a handful of folks swimming, I dismounted my bicycle and did likewise. 

From there I checked out a stone beehive hut, an old fort, Seven Churches (very old church ruins) and rode my bike on a cow path that took me to the very end of Inishmore.  There I enjoyed a light snack while watching two fisherman row a boat with a broken engine back into shore.  Broken engines are lame.

I headed back in the opposite direction and made a stop at the famous fort, Dun Aengus.  This is one of Ireland’s most renowned forts due to its dramatic location and its origins that date back to 1100 BC.  Dun Aengus consists of multiple concentric semicircles whose walls end at the top of very high sea cliffs.

It amazes me that once inside the fort, there are no warning signs or guard rails to keep you from walking off the edge of the sea cliffs.  It’s like some kind of test.  If you go into this fort and walk off the edge, you don’t deserve to be a tourist ever again…or an alive human.  I kept riding back towards town and saw yet another fort.  All these forts were cool but not nearly as cool as the forts my brother Sean and I used to build out of blankets and pillows.

When I finally made it home eight hours later, I cleaned up my act and went to a pub named Ti Joe Wattys.  It was there I ate an enormous, guy-styled meal whose volume superceded the volume of my head.

I then walked back over to a pub overlooking the harbor and drank a Guinness outside.  A few minutes later, I ended up meeting one of the weirdest dudes I have ever met to date.  His name was Martin and he asked if he could take the seat next to me.  After discussing the boring stuff like politics, world affairs and optometry (that’s Martin’s line of work – I don’t make it a habit to discuss optometry with anyone), we got into far grittier matters.

When I told him that I perform comedy, he asked me if he could tell me some jokes.  Martin proceeded to tell me several morbid jokes, all concerning the theme of dead babies.

“Chris, what’s worse than finding a dead baby in a trash bin?”

“What’s that Martin?”

“Finding a dead baby in ten trash bins!  Alright, Chris…what’s funnier than a dead baby?”

“You’ll probably tell me…”

“A dead baby in a clown outfit!”

These are merely a few of the macabre gems he hurled at me. 

It gets better…

“So Martin, what brings you to Inishmore?”

“Spiders.”

“Uhh, how is that?”

“I collect spiders.  It’s my hobby.”

He then tells me that he holds the world record for gathering the greatest number of spider species in Ireland, 320 (there are 410 total within Ireland, roughly 20,000 in the world – way to be Martin).  He told me of the great excitement when coming across a species he had not yet encountered.  I imagine this excitement must have been similar to the excitement I was feeling towards my discovery of the human species now known as Martin the Spiderfella.

To Martin, spiders were more of a currency than money.  To prove my point, two things:

1) He told me that the day before, he was overturning rocks on an old wall by the main road.  Upon looking under a rock, he found a penny dated 1871. 

“Wow,” I said. “That has to be worth something.  Did you take it?”

“No.”

2) Supposedly, the Irish government pays him 1000 Euros a day ($1500) to collect spiders.

“Amazing,” he told me. “Children starving in the world and I’m getting paid 1000 Euros a day to collect spiders.”

Then came the perfect chance for me to test Martin’s spider prowess.  Crawling on the wall, a foot away from me was a spider. 

“Quick Martin!  What kind of spider is it?!”

He took off his glasses, put his face one inch from the spider, studied it for a few seconds and rifled out some longwinded, Latin, scientific name with such ease, you would swear the spider was one of his children.  Martin then whipped out a tiny test tube from his backpack, stuffed the spider inside of it and placed the sample in his backpack that was full of other spider samples.

“Excellent!” he proclaimed.

As an aside, when Martin said “excellent” (which he did a lot), he said it exactly like Mr. Burns of The Simpsons.  The great part is that he doesn’t own a television and he swore he never saw the show.

“Martin, have you ever seen Spiderman?”

“No”

“A must see for someone in your profession.”

Then a lad from the Irish Navy walked by us and asked if we had seen his friend.  Martin, who was well on his way at this stage, convinced PJ the navy guy to sit down and have a pint with us.  Off the shore, we could see PJ’s boat.

Martin adamantly held up his phone up!  “Let’s call the other lads on the boat!  Get them over here for a drink!”

PJ declined the offer and Martin retorted, “Fine! Let’s go over to the boat!”

All of this was too rich and decadent.  Did I deserve such a brilliant human encounter as this?  I didn’t know but I was willing to take my chances.

Twenty minutes after PJ left, I watched Martin stumble his way to Ti Joe Wattys where we listened to Irish guys play American country music.  The lead singer, complete with a brogue, had learned to sing exactly like an American country singer.  Odd.  Odd enough I decided it was time to leave the bar, the country music and Spiderfella.

Wednesday, August 29th

My last day in Inishmore started with a sturdy Irish breakfast and a ferry ride back to Doolin.  Before reaching Doolin, the boat stopped at Inisheer, the smallest of the Aran Islands.  The tide was so low that when the boarding ramp was placed from the ferry to the dock, it was at a 45-degree angle.  What would have taken the boarding passengers a total of five minutes to board ended up taking over 30 minutes.

They looked like frightened creatures nervously scaling their way down a steep hill.  Small children had to be carried down by the crew like bags of groceries.  Every once in a while, you would get a tuff (tough person) that would bomb down the ramp just to prove to the world that gravity and fear are for pukes.

With the tide still low in Doolin, the ferry didn’t even pull up to the dock.  It remained out in the harbor as small 12-passenger boats shuttled us to this crumbly, concrete stairway that brought us to the top of the pier.  The experience had the flavor of an unarmed version of the landing at Normandy in World War II; the big boat stays off-shore while the soldiers quickly land on shore with smaller motorboats.  Thankfully, I had no German army trying to shoot my head off when I reached land.

I then drove up the road to my hostel and checked in.  The man at the front desk, David, gave me some advice on a good walk nearby so after getting settled, I drove north to a small beachside village known as Fanore.  I was now in the part of Ireland known as “The Burren”.  For the most part, The Burren is a vast area of exposed limestone but it was not always this way.  Centuries ago, farmers cut down trees and small shrubbery which led to massive erosion.  Whoops.

My walk took me on a large loop up on to the large hills that overlooked Galway Bay and back down to where I parked my car. 

I then drove back, cleaned up and walked to O’Connors pub for Guinness and music.  Sadly, there were no spider collecting oddities to interact with so I went back to the hostel and slept.

Thursday, August 30th

My last day in Ireland and the last day of my trip.  It began with a meal and a drive south to Shannon Airport.  Once in the Shannon area, I looked for a gas station.  As my search lingered on, I began to grow agitated at the lack of gas stations.  For a moment, I yearned for the American accessibility to gas.  Why am I right outside a decently-sized airport and made to feel that I may as well be looking for an aardvark furniture store?  I finally found some gas, returned the car and boarded the plane.

When I landed in Boston, my buddy Tom picked me up in his big grey Dodge pickup.  Few things are tougher than getting picked up in a big grey pickup.   Whether you’re getting picked up from the airport, karate lessons, a grocery store, or prison - big grey pickups do it with toughness.  If that wasn’t tough enough, I gave Tom a bottle of 12-year old Jameson for his troubles.  Pickups, whiskey, me…things were getting so tough I almost passed out.

I grabbed my car at Tom’s shop, thanked him for his driving and headed back to 83 Willow. 

Thanks for reading.

Bye.

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