Enter Killarney

After I finished up my studies at Oxford, I had a week's worth of vacation before my flight home. I decided to go to Ireland, and I ended up going alone. After a little research, I picked out a town in the southwest called Killarney. It's got great mountains and lakes, and several famously scenic bike rides in the vicinity.

To help you understand the events of my first day there from my perspective, I need to tell you about my preceding sleep history. I stayed up until 1:00 am on Sunday (July 22) so that I could catch a bus to Stansted airport. The ride was three hours long, and I was tired, so I propped myself up with the seatbelt and put my head against the window. I probably got an hour or two of shoddy sleep. Then I stumbled off the bus and into the airport, prodding my eyelids to try and unstick my contacts a little. I weathered airport processing with a gritty, humorless stare, and eventually boarded my tiny little airplane at about 6:00 am. On the plane, I sat next to a guy named James and opted to talk to him rather than taking the hour of sleep.

James was the beginning of Killarney day one. I sat next to him because he looked intelligent and friendly, and he turned out to be both. James was 38, if memory serves. He had dark hair, close cut, and about two days' worth of stubble. There was a snip of purple yarn knotted around his wrist so that he did not forget about his young daughter. We had a good, wide ranging discussion on the plane, and decided to explore Killarney together, a least for a little while. He advised me that whenever it's not raining in Ireland, you really shouldn't be inside sleeping, so we went ahead and rented some bikes the moment we hit town.

For present and future reference, here are some of the routes and locations I'll be discussing: I love Google maps.

After discovering my new favorite (continental) breakfast, which is mandarin orange slices on a bed of rice crispies and milk, we pedaled off toward Dunloe gap. It wasn't a particularly long ride, but it was tough at times because I had all my possessions bungied to the back of the bike. The highway got narrow, and we hugged the bushy shoulder of the road as cars flew by. Those Irish folk seem pretty jaded to cyclists. When the landscape finally opened on either side, I could really see that we were in a beautiful country. Everything was effortlessly green, and the grassy fields rolled out into the distance. The mountains off to our left appeared much closer then they really were in the clear air. It wasn't hot like a North Carolina summer, it was perfect.

As we drew near to Dunloe gap and turned off the highway, we started to see impressive clods of poop here and there on the road. They're called jaunting cars - open two-wheeled carriages pulled by ponies. We passed several on our way into the valley. Our proximity to the mountains and the size of my grin became irrevocably linked. When we paused at a couple shops near the base of the mountain, I knew it was time for another Haggis Hill experience.

James prefers fishing to mountain climbing, particularly because he has weak knees, so we decided it was time to split up. We made vague plans to communicate and meet up later, but I never got around to calling him. Sometimes it's the simplest little oversights that haunt you. That's OK, though, because I had a mountain to climb, and a good deed to do at the top. Next post: Buddy Mountain.