Sorry about that kids, didn't mean to go dark on yea. I was off the grid in Portrush for the last 2 days so and the only connection they had was at the town library that’s only true function turned out to be screwing non-residents. Plus, I'm pretty sure the head librarian was French. Damn French…
OK, where did we leave off…oh yeah, me getting my face carved on. I still don't have any whiskers and am thinking that might be a permanent thing. Worse thing could have happened I guess. I just wish I had know so I could have made some cool face beard design before it all went away forever. Oh well, such is life.
Our last night in Galway was spent listening to some Irish music. We settled early in one bar not too far from the bar we spent the last night at. The music wasn't nearly as good but we laughed our asses off the whole time. 2 of the strangest people I have ever seen in my life. Let me set the scene: line bar that opens up in a square stage area, 90% at capacity, music loud but not deafening. There was a group of about 5 American girls sitting across the room from us but we just noticed them because they were so obviously American – wearing flip-flops in 38c weather and very green. So at some point this guy comes up and just plops down in the middle of them. Now I'd say these girls were between 19 and 20 and this guy was probably in his early 30s so the chicks are immediately uncomfortable. So Matt and Paul and I start watching this all unfold. It really was like watching a car wreck. You couldn't take your eyes off it and quite frankly didn't want to do anything to prevent it because you knew you weren't going to see something like it again. So as the night wears on this guy starts exhibiting an alarming array of psychotic disorders, so much so that he was quickly nicknamed "scratch and sniff". Let me elaborate. He had a habit of scratching parts of his body and then sniffing whatever hand did the scratching in between doing circles, smiling and talking to the ceiling. It started with his balding, dandruff head. That was pretty disturbing in itself, but he quickly moved to the bottom of his foot and back. The coup de gras was when he pulled a Mary Catherine Gallagher and stuck is hand in his armpit and gave it a nice whiff. None of us, least of all those girls, slept well that night. Truly disturbing.
The other great guy was a big ass rugby player, complete with shaved head, who took turns doing violent jigs in the middle of the dance floor (actually it wasn't a dance floor, it was a hallway but quickly became a dance floor after he made it one). After a while he'd tire and go pick up, literally, one of the other people, girls or guys, and dance with them. He was so taught, they finally gave him the boot but he must have snuck in through the Johnny Cash cause he was back in no time. They gave him the final curtain after he picked up one of the bartenders and dragged him over the bar to dance. Awesome.
So we drove to Portrush the next day. A 6hr drive that your boy made in 4.5. Had to teach the Irish people a thing or 2. Actually, we would have taken much longer but none of us were doing the km->ml/hr conversions correctly so when we thought we were doing 60 miles an hour, we were doing 90. My bad. Either way, aside from the wide-eyed looks we got from the people we were quickly passing, a pretty easy drive. Ireland's not that big, smaller than Texas. It's just that they have not highways. They have roads, but not highways so it takes a while to get anywhere.
So we roll into Portrush, hungry as all hell and go to this restaurant Rick Steve's recommended. Honestly people, one of the top 5 meals I've ever had. It wasn't in the least bit Irish. It was this really eclectic dive with £2 wine and weird ass food. Paul got this salmon Thai dish, I got this Thai, chicken dish and Matt got, what turned out to be, Sattai (sp?). Fucking amazing. We all swore, and then promised we'd come back for dinner to the same place. We bummed around the town for a bit, when to see a local castle that was perched on the edge of the sea (seriously, the Irish had this thing about putting everything right on the balls edge of the ocean. This one actually had the kitchen collapse into the sea with the kitchen staff with it in the 1700's) and drove back looking for some more kick ass cuisine. So this time around, I get duck (I love duck), Paul gets salmon again, Matt got some salmon soup thing. Again, it was like a party in my mouth. They we went at the desserts - ginger lime cheesecake, tiramisu and banana toffee (banoffee). Now, everyone should know that I hold a burning hatred for bananas and all things banana flavored. However, Matt insisted that I give it a shot so I did. I didn't hate it.
Then we went to the bar across the way to have a few pints with the lads. Turns out it was quiz night (a very popular bar game in the UK – it trivial pursuit without the board and a prize, usually a pint, at the end) so after naming our team "Yanks" we paid our 5 quid and set off. We soon realized that half of the questions were UK and Ireland based – like "who is the biggest footballer to play for both Limerick county and County Clare?” A group of 3 girls realized just how stupid we were going to look and told us to slide over and they'd help us with the UK questions. They were very nice and invited us over to their place afterwards. Now I know what you're all thinking and it's not like that, these were big girls, full of life. But mostly big girls. On top of that, we'd run out of Pounds (Portrush is in Northern Ireland which is part of the UK, the UK doesn't use the Euro yet) so we couldn't buy any more beer which theses girls had plenty of. So we head over to their house and only have 1 or 2 beers before they break out, I shit you not, Dance, Dance Revolution. Now, if you are not familiar with this game, congratulations. You either don't have an annoying 12 year old in your life or you've never seen any early Lindsay Lohan movies. It's basically a matt with squares that you must dance on as the direction appears on the screen. My only regret is that we didn't have a camera to get Matt and Paul on tap dancing to the techno stylings of Moby McFly. Of course, Matt got way too competitive and we had to leave. On the way home I got a memo from my stomach (usually a staunch supporter of mine, along with the liver) that all was no right. I fought the feeling and slept through breakfast. As we were about to leave I quickly came to the realization I was going to toss my cookies at some point that morning and it might as well be at the B&B.
So after yelling at the seagulls for a few minutes, we headed out to this rope bridge about 15 miles away. It was cold as a witches' tit and the wind was a good 30 ml/hr clip so crossing the rope bride 300ft over the churning Atlantic. Luckily, I made it across the bridge again before talking to Ralf. We went back to the gift shop, had some tea, threw up again and headed to the Giant's Crossing.
Now, the Giant's crossing is one of the coolest things I've seen. It's all these basalt hexagon pillars as far as you can see. It's like of like the earth offering God his choice out of a pack of 37,000 cigarettes. Very cool. Now, just to let you know how shitty I was feeling and how much I wasn't pussing out, I actually made Matt and Paul drop me off at the B&B INSTEAD of going to the Bushmills tour. Yeah, that bad. I slept for the next 20 hours.
I woke up this morning dehydrated but much better. We went straight to the Bushmills distillery. They gave us a taste of the good stuff (lost of fun at 9am) and we were driving again soon. Don't worry, if you put all of us together, you had 1 mostly sober person.
We drove on to a Dublin via a few burial mounds (again, makes our Native American sites look like a putt-putt golf range), turned the car in and are now doing laundry before Patty's day tomorrow. Even the Irish are scared of Patty's day. If you ask them what it will be like, they just look at you wide eyed and shake their heads. I'm soooo psyched. We're going to try and catch a Gaelic football game (like rugby with a soccer ball – we have no idea how the game is played but it's supposed to be like Pulp Fiction on a field) and Hurling (field Hockey on serious) both of which these people are mad for.
Alright, that's certainly enough for now. Light a candle for me. I'll need it tomorrow.
Mark "McCool" Mitchell
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