While thumbing in Mallow I was thanking the gods for the good weather as I was coming down with a cold, when a bee stung me on my finger as I was brushing it from my shirtsleeve. I was brought back to 8th grade english class, the last time I was stung by a bee, also from a bee in my shirtsleeve. I noticed it there and stood up and started flailing around trying to get it out. No one took me seriously because I was a bit of a class clown back then. So, feeling an odd combination of misery and blessedness in my situation I waited about 45 minutes until an Englishman from South Africa picked me up and took me as far as Buttevant, about 20 km south of Limerick. In Buttevant, a bit of a ghost town, about half of all the shops abandoned, it was about 4PM, when once again I ran into my fellow hitchhiker friend. "I though you were going to Dublin!" I said to him. "I don't speak language," he said, "from Chech Repooblic." I realized he might not even know where he was going, just rambling in the truest sense of the word. He just said Dublin earlier because it was the only city he knew of in Ireland, an automatic response. He put two fingers to his mouth in the international symbol for a cigarette, I let him roll one, and he goes about 50 yard down the road and sticks his thumb out. Fifteen minutes later a guy of about 30 years stops and says, "You goin' to Galway?" I says to him "Hell yeah!" and hop in. Jackpot. This came at a point when I was resigning myself to staying the night in Limerick, about the halfway point between Cork and Galway. I realize that my wasted two hours on the wrong road helped deliver me to this point, to be at the right place at the right time to catch this straightaway spin all the way to my destination.

His name was Karreth, he works and lives in Cork City, and was on his way to Galway to see his family for the weekend. I really lucked out with him, we had great conversation and even smoked a spliff. He drove me all the way into Galway city, even though where he was going was in the suburbs. "Don't go too far out of your way for me..." I said to him, to which he responded with something akin to what I feel I would say, "What, it's ten minutes out of my life and I'm helping someone out" We xchanged email addresses and parted ways. He dropped me off at an internet cafe where I checked for any responses to my last minute couchsurfing requests. No such luck, so I stayed in a hostel and took it easy for the night. I walked around aimlessly for a bit and ran into a couple of rickshaw drivers and got a promising lead on where to rent them and make a little bit of money...

Yesterday I woke up, checked out of the hostel and found a positive response to my many couchsurfing requests. I followed up on the rickshaw lead before meeting with my host and my hopes were dashed away, all the rickshaws were booked up through the week, I walked off disappointed, but the guy called me back saying he had one available at 7:30 or 8 that night. Shit yeah.

I met my host at 4:30, another Pole. His name is Paluch and he lives real close to the city centre. When I returned to the rickshaw place, the bossman was a no-show... I knew it was too good to be true. I had given him Paluch's phone number and he called around 10, saying he had one still, but it was a case of too little too late. Hopefully he'll call sometime next week... I was really really looking forward to driving a rickshaw around Galway.

I'm now at internet cafe, where I'm getting free usage from Paluch's Australian roommate who works here. Galway is a great city, very similar to Rennes in France. It's known as a the party city of Ireland, there are two universities here. I'll stay here for about a week, Teagan will arrive on the 2nd, then we'll head to Wicklow.

written by  Dan Schoo on August 30, 2008 from Galway, Ireland
from the travel blog: A cowboy boot to Europe's ass...
tagged HitchHiking and Galway
Send a Compliment

---

1 comment...

I have been working pretty much exclusively on the drive up to the two houses, which is about 100 yards long. It is one of those primitive roads that you see all over Ireland. There is a patch of grass in the center and for the tires of cars are two strips consisting of rocks and dirt and gravel. On the sides are the age old Irish walls simply made of rocks stacked upon each other. My work involves taking up sod on any side that is becoming too narrow for cars and trucks, carting it in a wheelbarrow somewhere else and dumping it. Then if the ground beneath the sod has become compromised, that is, if it's soil that grass may grow up on again or if there are holes, or if it's too slippery, I arrange rocks upon it in such a way that it is flat. I imagine that it's like building the Irish rock walls (which is something I'd like to do at some point), but a lot more simple. This is the kind of road that you take for granted until you realize how much work is required to maintain it. I also trim back the brambles, or blackberry bushes, if you will... this is a job I'm not too keen on. They are constantly fighting their way onto the drive, and as we all know, they are fucking relentless and grow like mad. It's the kind of work that always needs doing, but no one wants to do it.

Sometimes I help mind Rafael, who is a handful and talks and talks and talks. He seems to have taken to me quite well, he'll come up to me and say 'Hi dan hi dan hi dan...' ad infinitum.

The weather here is still absolutely terrible. It was my first day off on sunday and I was hoping to do a little hiking or hitchike to the nearest town, either Bantry or Ballydehob, but no. It didn't stop raining all fucking day. Though, when I'm working it has no problem being relatively nice and dry, ah well, Murphy's Law right? It's cold and wet here. The exception being Saturday, luckily enough, as we went to the annual Ballydehob street festival. Ballydehob is just up the way, a town of about 1,500 or so. The festival took place on the small main street which is on a hill. The whole thing was all quite silly, really. The first event was for the kids, it was a turnip race in which the youngsters have to throw a turnip up the hill race after it, pick it up again, throw it, and repeat the process until reaching the finish line. The second event was the dog races, in which dogs of varying sizes raced up the hill, quite a lark. And the final event, my favorite, was the wheelbarrow race. This was for the adults and they had to push their partner up the hill in a wheelbarrow and stop at a station where the rider has to chug a bottle of beer before they continue up to the next station, of which I think there were two or three. At the end of it all, Rubicon, a celtic rock band played on the back of a truck. Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed the band, the electric fiddle player had a cordless device set up, so he could rip it up on the fiddle and mix in with the crowd. Grand.

On sunday, we went to Fossett's circus, Ireland's national circus. It was kind of standard Barnum and Bailey's style fare, but smaller and very well done with all the clowns, acrobats, trapeze artists, the big round metal cage with the motorcycles going round and round in it as the finale. I was picked by the clown to participate (the second I made eye contact I knew I was in for it) in a little stunt in which I and three other men of similar size were made to sit in four chairs arranged so as we could each lean onto the other's lap. At which point, the clown pulled out each chair one by one until we were laying down on each other with our knees at right angles supporting ourselves with nothing else holding us up. It was a laugh riot. Grand.

With all the shitty weather I've just been reading a lot, really. Upon moving into my room I found that a previous WOOFER left Dave Eggers's 'What is the What' and decided to give it a try. I attempted his 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' but got 3/4 through and found it intolerably egotistical (yes, I know this is alluded to in the title, self-referentiality whoopdeedoo, even taking this into condideration, I found it absolutely asinine), conceited and trite. But I find I'm rather addicted to this one. Eggers adopts the subject's almost childlike way of speaking and it's quite refreshing, not to mention it escapes everything I hated about 'Heartbreaking Work...' As depressing as the subject matter is, it's deeply moving and enjoyable to read. I'm almost done already.

I am now without facial hair. No more 'stache. It's been a few days and I still think it looks weird and surprising when I see my reflection. I'm sure you'll be happy, Deidre.

One last thing: the stars. At night the clouds seem to clear up more often than during the day and I'm thankful for it. It reaveals a blanket of stars that I'm used to having to trek to the mountains to see. I found this to be the case in Donegal also. It's not that populated out here or in Donegal, and thus the light pollution is not that bad. The towns are far more simple than ones, even the smaller ones, in the states because they're far older. It's beautiful and I find it wonderfully refreshing to see.

written by  Dan Schoo on August 20, 2008 from Ballydehob, Ireland
from the travel blog: A cowboy boot to Europe's ass...
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...