A Wee Bit of Rain

Ryefield, Ireland – Kilkee – Belfast, Northern Ireland

Before I start on the last two days, I wanted to circle back to my last post. 

Realized that I kind of took the easy road – implying that life is somehow better or more well-lived when you’re out doing big adventures. Which is actually kind of the opposite of what I really believe.

By far the best and most meaningful parts of our lives have been the parts that have happened not while traveling, but while at home or in the close environs of home. Or, maybe a better way of putting it, the most meaningful parts of our lives have happened independently of travel highlights.

Like raising our daughters. We traveled some with them for sure – but it was the steady presence, the routines, the love, and the occasional tough love that we gave them that was the most important. Not some grand trip somewhere. 

Or our marriage. Same thing. We have had the good fortune to have some amazing experiences in our lives. But those experiences are not the defining feature of our marriage. It’s our everyday life together that has made our marriage strong and resilient. Some of it very difficult. Like raising our kids. Or supporting each other in hard times. But those are the times that have, ultimately, brought us closer together . . .

Or relationships with friends and relatives. Same thing here. I can think of some highlight days – but, really, all of the highlight days are really culmination points – not some random meetings at the top of the Eiffel Tower. For me, many of these highlights involve sporting events – skiing, or mountain biking, or running. We’ll choose an event and then work together over weeks, or months, or even years to prepare for it. I might remember the individual day of the event more than I do all the training sessions, but what made the day of the event meaningful was the work we put in to get there – and, most significantally, that we did it together. 

I’m afraid I’m starting to sound preachy – so I won’t go on here – but obviously community also belongs on this list. Whether it’s a work community, where you live, or even some online community, all the same ideas apply. 

Look at Diana’s work as a physician. I think it’s fair to say that what she values most are the patient relationships she’s had over time. She beams when she talks about patients she delivered years ago who are now coming back with their own kids. You don’t have experiences like that when you spend your whole life checking off travel boxes . . .

I guess I mention all this particularly for our younger readers. My sense is that the generation coming of age now feels like they need to “find themselves” – whatever that means – and that maybe they’ll accomplish this by going to exotic places. My advice – to the extent anyone cares . . . Find something that you have in abundance – and then try to figure out a way to share that with the world – hopefully while getting paid a little so you can make the rent. 

For Diana that abundance was an incredible ability to gather and retain knowledge – which she has parlayed into a meaningful career with a wonderful community of patients who she loves to help. For me, I guess it’s my pigheaded determination that is the trait I have in the most abundance. Not always the easiest to live with – but it did allow me to help create a robust community in Minneapolis – mostly because I’m not super good at listening to “no.”

For some it’s an ability to care and nurture – and maybe those people become nurses. Or, for others, it’s the patience to teach. Or maybe, like my friend Piotr, you are a student of sport and you have a great ability to meet people where they are – so you become a coach.

Maybe it’s an understanding of computers so you write programs or you help people avoid throwing their phones off of a bridge because of their frustrations with technology.

It doesn’t matter. And there isn’t always just one thing. The point is to find something you have in abundance, and then share it. 

Alright – that’s more than enough of that . . . I’ll try to be more careful in my grand statements next time – so I won’t have to go back and write more big corrections . . .

The last few days – like most of our experience in the British Isles thus far – have been a mixed bag. 

A little anecdote from two days ago – as we crossed into Northern Ireland . . .

It’s been raining most of the day, thanks to a nasty thorn that decided to attach to Diana’s wheel

we had our first flat tire in thousands of miles

and tempers are short . . .

We finally arrive at the ferry that will take us across Carlingford Lough (“lough” apparently means lake, body of water, sea, sound, pond, or anything like that . . .) toward the end of the day. Somehow the sun has found its way through the clouds and is actually shining – so that’s good. 

We start talking with a quintessentially Irish man whose name is very difficult for us Americans. He pronounced it something like ‘Wee un’ – but said it was like “John Wayne.” We’ll go with Wayne for now . . .

Wayne has a business hauling logs to sawmills. Which is a little surprising to me because there isn’t much in the way of forests around Ireland. But Wayne says there are enough, and that he hauls “a wee bit of them.” (“Wee” is a big thing here. I guess you just add “wee” to any statement and it makes it more Irish – and maybe a bit softer or something. Example: “There’s a wee toilet around that wee corner.”) He has two sons who are 21 and 23 – like our girls. They help him with the log hauling business.

Wayne and his sons traveled to America years ago. His wife couldn’t go because she was sick at the time with a rare genetic disorder. I don’t know the name of it, but Diana says it is a very bad disease. And when Diana says it’s bad, you know it’s REALLY bad . . . His wife died from the disease when the boys were only 12 and 14. Sounds tough. 

That’s not the first case of rare genetic diseases that we’ve run into in Ireland, and when we look it up we figure out that Ireland does, indeed, have a higher prevalence of such diseases than other parts of the world. Something about being on an isolated island. 

Our plan is to catch the ferry, have dinner at a pub, and then camp at a “caravan park” along the water. We catch the ferry okay – but the rest of the plan doesn’t work out so well . . . Turns out that the ferry terminal is a deserted beach – with no (open) pubs for miles around. 

We ask, and there is a hotel that serves food in the next town – which is five miles down the road. So now it’s late, we’re tired from a hilly day on the bikes, we’re wet from the rain, and we’re hungry. Ugh. We start off, and we don’t even bother to turn on our mapping devices because it looks like there’s just one way to go anyway – heading east along the north shore of the water.

We’re biking along – past the normal cows and sheep – and there’s a sign for Kilkeel – the town we’re heading toward. All good. Except that after a while I’m noticing shoreland on our left. It slowly dawns on me that if we were going along the north shore we should be seeing the water on our right . . . Eventually we pull over and look at the map on the phone. Sure enough – we are well off course; that Kilkee sign wasn’t exactly wrong, but we read it wrong . . .

Great! (Note the sarcasm.)

So now I turn on Google Maps and it tells me that we don’t need to go all the way back to the sign. There’s a “shortcut” we can take. We follow it, and it’s gravel – but it shouldn’t be more than a mile or two – and we’re in no mood to go farther . . . 

Soon we’re in the middle of a farm. Like, right in the middle. There’s the farm house. There’s the dairy barn. There’s the mud. There’s a silo. We are going right down Irish Farmer Lane! 

And then there’s a dead end. The lane ends in a locked gate. 

Where did we go wrong? Oh, I see, Google Maps tells me we overshot a turn right before the farm. We head back there, and, sure enough, there is a road we missed. And we can see why. The “road” is just a series of puddles – maybe better described as loughs themselves. Probably up to a foot deep, full of mud, and fenced off on either side by the farm – so no going around them . . .

So now we’re heading back to the main road. The “shortcut” just added yet another extra mile or two of gravel – for nothing. 

There is no other word for it. We’re in death march mode at this point. We’ve been going about a half-hour from the ferry and somehow it’s still five miles to the town. 

At least it’s not raining. Which is not a small miracle. In Ireland that’s like a parting-of-the-red-sea sized miracle . . . So I guess we have to be thankful . . .

We finally make it. The place is nice – but we’re too tired and grumpy to enjoy it. Which is sad, because it cost a fortune. 

But that’s no place to end a story. Don’t want our readers starting their days all depressed now, do we? 

The next day – yesterday – is, and you won’t believe this – sunny! The only cloud in the sky is a wee wisp that is caught on the peak of one of the now-visible Mountains of Mourne. We didn’t know that blue was a color that was possible in Ireland. And, I guess we’re in Northern Ireland now – so I don’t know – maybe there is still no blue in the Republic . . .

We climb the mountains – and they are beautiful. 

I didn’t know of it before this trip – but there’s a whole song about this area. Don McLean even sings a version of it. 

On the way down, a big truck coming the other way beeps at us. It’s Wayne! We’re like locals around here now . . .

Oh, and it may be Northern Ireland – but it’s still Ireland weather-wise – so, inexplicably, we suffer through a 20 minute torrential downpour in the midst of our otherwise bluebird day. So bad that passing lorries are spraying us as they plow through big puddles beside the road.

First impressions of Belfast . . . Love it. The neighborhood we’re staying in is full of people from all over the world. Chinese and Indian and Thai, and Turkish and Moroccan. We must have come into town right through the Queens College campus because there are beautiful ivy-covered buildings all around us. And the whole city sits in a bowl – surrounded by low mountains on three sides, with the sea to the east. Kind of reminds me of a smaller, northern version, of Medellin in Colombia. 

Well, that’s more than enough for one day. 

We’re hoping to see a Gaelic football match and go on a history walking tour today. And then it’s another ferry to Liverpool and the final phase of our British Isles tour tomorrow . . .