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Ireland 5/24/2013

Yesterday was very cold and windy; we were glad we weren’t on the bike.  As our bus driver told us: ”When you come to Ireland, dress for an Irish summer:  Rain coat, umbrella and warm clothes." But today was much warmer with lots of sun.  Brenda and i played tourist:

1. Visited the National Library.
2. Went on a tour of the houses of parliament.
3. Went on a tour of Trinity College
4. Went back to the library and took in the Joyce and Yeats exhibits.
5. Started on a 2-hour historical tour but didn’t finish because we had difficulty understanding the guide.
6. Went to see the Book of Kells and Trinity College Library.

 




 

Photos above": Top left - National Library, right – Trinity College.  Bottom left – original parliament building (1793) was sold to a bank in 1803 when the Irish and English parliaments were combined. Right – Long Room, Trinity college Library.

“Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” – George Benard Shaw

THE BLOG:  Ireland is a land of writers and poets: Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith, Sean O’Casey, Samuel Beckett, G.  B. Shaw, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats.  Dublin is a UNSECO World Heritage Literary Center.  --  But you know not to expect anything literary from this blog.  Or anything scientific. Or wise. Or even consistent. It’s just the babblings of a bicyclist as he pedals down the road.  Normally, the blog only comes to life when on a bike tour. The next one begins approximately August 15, coincidentally my daughter’s birthday.  Until then, the blog goes to sleep; it does not die.

(be sure to click on photo at right for larger image)

Ireland 5/23/2001

With tandems packed, today a bus takes us to Dublin.  We’ll be there for a day and a half; not enough time to explore this city.  We’ve spent time in Dublin before; it’s a great and lively city.  One interesting statistic; the country of Ireland has approximately the same number of residents as the Dallas / Ft Worth metroplex.

For ten of the fourteen of us, this is their first experience in Ireland.  So I asked for impressions:  hilly, windy, green, friendly, dry (We were lucky; it has been a very wet winter.), fresh food that is well cooked, good beer, beautiful countryside, cold, polite drivers, quiet roads.  The excellent and cooperative  service from all hotel, restaurant, and pub staff – and the friendly and helpful citizens seemed to be what I’ve heard most.  Also worth noting: all of the staff were locals, not low-paid staff from foreign countries. Photo above is a gate to the Guinness Brewery.  However it is not “St James Gate”, the official address of the brewery.

In addition to our good luck with the weather (one rain day out of 14) we had pretty good luck with the tandem bicycles. We had one broken spoke, one broken chain, one one broken cable (drum brake) and one broken fender mount.  We were able to address all of these issues and didn’t need a bike store. Note that there were no flat tires!

WHO’S RIDING? Brenda and I retired from Mobil Oil Corporation in February 2000.  Since that time, we’ve been fortunate in that we’ve been  on 70 bike tours.  We’ve led 14 bike tours for Bicycle Adventure Club and 7 (Texas(2), Oklahoma, England, Nova Scotia, Italy and now Ireland) for tandem friends. In mid August we begin a 30-day ride on the US West Coast, from Seattle to Yosemite Valley.

Ireland 5/22/2013

Today is the last riding day, a dramatic but difficult day.  There are two “gaps” (sometimes called “passes”), Sally’s and Wicklow.  We know there is a 12 km climb at the beginning.  But we didn’t know how difficult it would be, especially with 20 mph headwind. Brenda and I gave up after about a half hour.  It was just too much.  Too old? Out of shape? Yes. Yes. One other couple also turned around. And one didn’t start.  The others, the brave souls who did the whole ride, arrived back at the hotel around 4:00 both cold and exhausted.  Then they had to disassemble and pack their tandems.  Since our bike was packed by noon, we walked to the next village and had a civilized lunch of seafood chowder, liver pate, cabernet sauvignon and cappuccino.  Life is good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHO’S RIDING?  Luther and Elaine Stevens live in Shaker Heights, OH and Frisco, CO.  Brenda and I first met them on a Pennywise Tandem Tour in Switzerland nine years ago. Elaine, a clinical psychotherapist, retired seven years ago.  Lou recently sold his business, Custom Paper Tubes.  Elaine has left our group early to go help care for a new grandson, Christopher Stevens Kressy.  The Stevens are scheduled for two other bike tours this year, Cycle Washington (Yellowstone) and a Pennywise tour in Germany (Bavaria).

Ireland 5/21/2013

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Today’s ride seemed intimidating: over 4,000 feet of climbing and headwinds of 17 miles per hour.  Not a good combination.  So we left on a cloudy and windy morning.  Not too far down the road I noticed the wind had more or less disappeared.  And so it was all day.  Apparently the weather forecast was very local; there weren’t many winds to the north.  But the hills were a different story.  We experienced 3 or 4 hills that were extremely steep – over 15% grade.  We really struggled on these. More later.

 

We had cappuccino and a scone in Tinahely.  The owners of the restaurant, an Indian couple, had owned it for one week.  They were justifiably proud of it.   Then we stopped in Aughrim, supposedly one of the prettiest towns in Ireland. See below; I wasn’t very impressed.

 

 

 

 

We had lunch in Rathdrum.  I show this picture of Brenda by the pub to demonstrate that the sun was shining.  We actually saw the sun most of the day.  And the roads on the last half of the ride were spectacular – mostly smooth pavement, gently rolling and mostly tree-lined.  So why no photo of these wonderful lanes?  Because when you’re enjoying the ride you don’t want to stop for anything; not even a blog photo.  That’s why I gave up photography in 1990, soon after the first tandem.  I found photography and cycling to be incompatible.

So we didn’t have the wind; what about the 4,000 feet (1193 meters) of climbing?  Our Garmin only recorded 916 meters.  All I know for sure is that there were big hills were early on today; all else was great.

WHO’S RIDING? Like John and Brenda, Henry Livingston retired (as International Controller) from ExxonMobil.  Debbie couldn’t handle a retired Henry so he worked another 5 years for Perot systems. Debbie retired from the ER Department of the International Risk Management Institute, a publisher.  Ten days after returning from Ireland, Henry and Debbie will be on a BAC tour of the Erie Canal and Finger Lakes region.  In September they will return to New York for a BAC ride in NYC and the Lower Hudson River Valley.  Henry found this wayside rest station on the way to Bunclody.

Ireland 5/20/2013

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Guinness has a new product on the market, “Mid Guinness”.  It has lower alcohol content and fewer calories. I got to try it last night. Thumbs down.  Below photos from dinner last night; great setting and great meal.

 

Every day for the past week, when we started to ride, the temperature has been in the 40’s.  Today it is 56. Well it started at 56.  At the top of Black Rock Mountain it was 46 and the clouds so thick you could barely see.  That’s us in the photo to the right.

There were two optional rides today, a shorter one going east and a longer one going west. We choose the longer, not knowing how difficult it was.  Here is the route.  The first 12 km were brutal. We were in our lowest gear and pedaling as hard as we could.  At one point, Brenda almost bailed on me. But we made it. At the top we rode along a ridge for a while and then had a screaming downhill.  Do we have our stokers to thank for the term “screaming downhill”?  After lunch in Borris, the terrain was moderate. Two photos below: left as we climb and right as we begin descent after the fog clears.

 

We stopped for lunch at Borris and parked our bikes in a courtyard near the pretty bike below.  When we returned, someone had closed the gate, locking our tandems inside.  No Elaine, whinning won’t help.

 

WHO’S RIDING? Alan and Renee Kailer are editors of the DATES newsletter, DATES LINE.  Alan practices law and Renee is a “retired homemaker’.  Alan claims a retired homemaker doesn’t cook dinner during the week.  This fall the Kailer’s are going to Germany for a wedding of a former exchange student.  While there, they’ll ride their tandem down the Mosel and Rhine Rivers.

Ireland 5/19/2013

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We visited the Irish National Heritage Park on the way out of town. Different tribes, civilizations and peoples have inhabited Ireland for 9000 years.  And you thought I was old!

 

 

In 600 AD the law required that a mug of beer should always be available to the visitor.  A king was expected to provide beer for his entire household every Sunday and the law went so far as to say that if he could not do so, he was no king.  Apparently the law has gone downhill ever sense.

  

 

 

 

 

 

Wexford to Bunclody.  Today we leave the sea and head inland, a two day ride to the Wicklow Mountains.  Here's the route, the shortest town-to-town ride on the tour. We detoured at Enniscorthy for lunch and immediately thought we’d made a bad decision because the road went down, down, down.  But we found another way our of town, detouring on a very pretty road (see photos above).

WHO’S RIDING?  Jim and Rhonda own a premier  bike shop, The Richardson Bike Mart, with stores in Richardson, Dallas and Frisco, Texas. Except for when he was serving  in Viet Nam, Jim has been been in the bike business his entire life.  He started hanging around bike shops in Nappanee, IN at age 10 and became a bike store owner over 30 years ago. Rhonda is also an avid cyclist and may have set a record; she has participated in every Hotter “N Hell bike events since it started in 1982. This summer the Hoyts are going to ride across the US from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine.

Ireland 5/18/2013

We’re in a pretty nice hotel, Whitford House, in Wexford, although Brenda and I have a pretty small room.  Actually the hotel is 3 to 4 km out of the city center which is not ideal for us. Last night’s dinner was by far the best of the group dinners arranged by Iron Donkey. The hotel has a large dining room and even larger bar which was packed last night.  So I thought the Irish economy was hurting; there’s not much evidence of it here.

Wexford Town was founded by the Vikings in about 800 AD although there are records of people here in the 2nd century. Today it is a thriving community of almost 20,000 with winding streets, a pretty quayside, pubs, cafes and fine restaurants.  The town swells in October with the Wexford Fringe Festival and the Wexford Festival Opera.

 

 

 

 

Commodore John Barry (1745 – 1803) is sometimes referred to “The Father of the American Navy”, was born in Wexford. He is buried in Philadelphia.  Two American presidents, Eisenhower and Kennedy, placed wreathes at this monument.

Two years after the great famine, construction began on twin Catholic churches, one in the north end of town and one in the south.  Both the Church of the Immaculate Conception and the Church of the Assumption were designed by Richard Pierce.  Both are 50.6 by 18.3 meters and are 67.7 meters high.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kilkenny architect Daniel Robertson was responsible for some of the building work on the Johnstown Castle.  He is generally believed to have laid out and planted much of the grounds and gardens in the 1830s. The gardens are now owned by the Irish agriculture department and used for research.  There is also an extensive museum devoted to farming in a former house on the property.

 

WHO’S RIDING: Ernie and Regina Coose are new to tandeming.  This is their first bicycle tour and Monday’s 67 mile ride from Cork to Dungarven was their longest ride ever.  But they’re doing great.  Ernie is a Technical Support Supervisor for a small software company and Regina is a part-time teacher.  They have the most technically advanced tandem of any of us with internal gears, belt drive and disc brakes.

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Ireland 5/17/2013

The guide on yesterday’s historical tour of Waterford had a great sense of humor, particularly when it came to politicians: “Do you know where ‘politicians’ is in the dictionary?   -- Between ‘perverts’ and ‘prostitutes’.”

Today we’re riding from Waterford to Wexford, once again on back roads.  Ireland has four levels of roads: M or motorways, N for national roads, R for regional and L for local.  How come other countries don’t have such a straight forward system?  So we ride mostly on R and L roads.  We took a shortcut after lunch, riding directly to Wexford on R733.  It was pretty busy for an R road and it had no shoulder but the passing cars gave us wide berth

 

 

 

 

The main point of interest today was Hook Head Lighthouse on Hook Peninsula.  It has serves sailors and shipping for  800 years, apart from a short closure during the 17th century. It is thought to be one of the oldest operational lighthouses in the world.

Here is today's route.  We had pretty good weather, sun early and late.  It was cloudy the rest of the day but the only shower was when we were in a pub eating lunch. Great planning, eh?

WHO’s RIDING? Chuck and Kris Carlson are chair (e.g. president) of Dallas Area Tandem Enthusiasts (DATES).  Recent retirees, Kris retired as Vice-President and Director of Support Services for J.C. Penny and Chuck was a Freelance Copywriter. In less than a week after the Ireland Tour, they’re riding with tandem friends from Houston and Dallas in the Black Hills of South Dakota.