Toast & Tracy's Epic Ireland Adventure

August, 2006

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Day Five

Needless to say, we slept in late Sunday morning. I think it was almost eleven when we finally rolled out of bed. I was still a little groggy from the previous night's proceedings. It was then that Tracy reminded me of my Grand Plan for that day: We were to climb Croagh Patrick.

Croagh Patrick is about a half hour's drive from Westport, and its scenic location and fairly easy ascent attract a steady stream of hikers of all abilities. Earlier on the trip I had seen a brochure and gotten all excited about climbing it on Sunday, our one free afternoon before leaving for Galway. It really did seem like a great idea at the time, too. Before the 14-hour wedding extravaganza. And the mild hangover. And the blisters on my heels from walking around and dancing in dress shoes all day and night.

"You know," I said to Tracy, "We don't have to go to Croagh Patrick. We could just hang out in town."

She was having none of it. "We should at least go see it, even if you don't want to climb it."

So off we went.

First, though, lunch. We drove through downtown Westport and down to lovely Westport Harbor where we found a restaurant called the Asgard that looked appealing. Once again, I ordered fish & chips. Once again, I was underwhelmed. Although the Asgard's offering easily topped Cosy Joe's, it still wasn't anything special by New England standards. I was starting to think the whole Great Seafood In Ireland thing was a ruse.

As we were leaving the Asgard, the event all the locals had been waiting for kicked off: The national Gaelic Football quarter-final match between county Mayo (where we were) and county Laois. One of the guests at the wedding had mentioned the game to me the night before, taking pains to impress upon me what a Big Deal this was. The winner would take on powerhouse Dublin in the semi-finals next weekend.

Alas, the mountain was calling to us.

Legend has it that Croagh Patrick was the mountain where St. Patrick led all the snakes in Ireland to their doom. Or he fasted there for forty days. Or maybe he told everyone he was fasting but actually ate the snakes. ("I am gettin' goddamned sick of these motherfeckin' snakes on this motherfeckin' mountain!") Whatever the case, St. Patrick made his mark on this place, to the extent that each year on the last Sunday in July hordes of Christian pilgrims make their way to climb the mountain barefoot.

When we arrived at the parking lot, an all too predictable reaction occurred in me: Upon seeing a tall pointy object nearby, I wanted to be on top of it. I cursed myself for my bout of early-morning lameness. Doubly so when Tracy pointed out that she had not worn her hiking shoes since we had decided not to make the ascent. Grrrrrrr...

We decided we would climb a little ways up. You know, just a bit. Get a good view. Tracy would have total decision-making power on our turnaround point.

Hiking up a few hundred yards, we came to the statue of Saint Patrick. Privately, I thanked him for the annual Extra Excuse To Drink which he had bequeathed to western society.

Although the weather was far from ideal, there were hundreds of people hiking up to the peak and back.

We hiked up another few hundred yards to a fence that ran across the trail. At this point, the clouds that had covered only the mountaintop on our arrival were beginning to head down the slope to meet us. The wind had picked up and it had started to rain. Any secret thoughts I might have been harboring about gradually luring Tracy up the mountain were quickly extinguished.

It was time to turn around. But not before taking in the view, including this shot of Westport Harbor.

By the time we got back to the parking lot, drizzle had thoroughly blanketed the area and the Sun had officially called it a day. Chilled and damp, we ducked into a tiny Mom-and-Daughter-run coffee shop. Sitting down, I noticed that The Game was on the television. After inquiring who was ahead (Mayo), I peppered the proprietress with a few rudimentary questions about Gaelic Football while Tracy and I watched the action on the Irish ESPN, RTE Sports.

Gaelic Football, as it turns out, is an extremely watchable game. It's... well, how to describe it? It's like they started with soccer but, realizing it wasn't nearly action-packed enough, decided to throw in a little basketball (dribbling with the hands), a little American football (scoring by kicking the ball through the uprights in addition to putting it in the net) and a bit of a Rugby-esque attitude. It sounds a little crazy, I know, but believe me, it's highly entertaining.

As we watched the Westerners of Mayo put the boots to Laois, Tracy asked if it wouldn't be more enjoyable to watch the game in a bar rather than a coffee shop. Why, yes, I said, it would be.

We pulled out of the parking lot on our quest for a passable "sports bar" and, sure enough, in less than 1/8th of a mile we found a small pub. Excellent! Then we walked in and encountered something entirely new on our journey: Unfriendly Irish people.

The bar was a 12' x 12' room with the TV next to the door, so as we walked into the bar we found ourselves surrounded by a ring of locals who were all staring at the television. Well, except the ones who had turned to stare at us. Like Angry Eyebrow Guy, who fixed me with a glare like I'd just walked in off the street with a World's Biggest Asshole t-shirt on. Tracy and I tried to squeeze into the corner at the end of the bar -- conveniently out of line-of-sight from the TV -- only to find that there was no one behind the bar. Patiently, we waited for, oh, twenty, thirty seconds or so. I noticed that Eyebrows was still staring at me. Then I quietly suggested to Tracy that perhaps we should move on to more friendly environs. She concurred, and we sidled back out the door.

Back on the road, we didn't find any more bars between the mountain and town. I didn't care. I was happy to have escaped the Un-Fun Bunch in one piece. I turned on the radio, hit scan, and quickly found the game. Mayo was still ahead. As we hit the outskirts of town, time expired and their victory was secured.

Back in Westport and thirsty for a pint, we ducked into McCarthy's Bar. This establishment shares a name with a book by Pete McCarthy which Tracy had read back in the Spring and which I'm currently about halfway through. According to McCarthy, the First Rule of Travel in Ireland is that when you see a bar with your name on it, you have to go inside. Lacking an Irish surname which would allow this rule to be invoked, I quickly invented a Corollary: When you find yourself outside a bar with the same name as a book which dictates circumstances in which one must drink in Ireland, the "meta" thing to do is to make a rule that you have to drink in that bar.

I'm so cool.

McCarthy's featured the two things we were looking for at the moment: Guinness and Patrons Who Didn't Hate Feckin Tourists.

We stuck around for a couple and caught some of the recap and analysis of the game. Despite our brief, tangential, and momentarily traumatic association with the team, there was a tacit understanding that we had become Mayo fans. Later, as we drove up the driveway to the Knockranny, I saw we were not alone: My cousin Tommy was headed into the hotel sporting a Mayo replica jersey. I knew right then that I must have one.

The plan was to nap, as had become our afternoon custom. Wasn't happenin', at least not for me. We ran into my cousins Kristin and Kara at the Knockranny bar just as they were heading downtown to meet Uncle Joe, Kim and Neil at a bar called Moran's. I turned to Tracy to see if she'd mind napping alone, but she already knew the score. Off I went with the cousins, fired up to get the evening's festivities underway.

Moran's was the second-tiniest bar I've ever been in. (The tiniest was in Key West.) The front section of the bar is actually a deli or store of sorts. It's about 8' square. As you pass through a tiny door to the back, you find yourself entering an area about as wide as a subway car and similarly furnished, at least on one side. There's a bench along one wall with tables in front of it and a bar along the other. In the middle are tiny stools squeezed in and around the tables, and upon one of these is where I planted myself.

Had a pint. Then someone bought me another. And someone else another. By 6:30 PM or thereabouts, I was starting to feel It.

You know, "It", right? That feeling that tells you "Oh, yes, debauchery is in the immediate future, my friend." You might call it Party Gravity. Or you might hear your mind whisper, as I often do when "It" hits, "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun."

I might not have ascended the peak of Croagh Patrick that fine Sunday, but I would ascend the peak of Mount Shitty.

Around 7:15 PM we headed over to a fine little Italian restaurant where my aunt Bon and uncle Joe had invited the family for a post-wedding dinner. Kristin and Tom were heading off on their honeymoon the next day and many of Tom's relatives were heading home. As for our family sub-unit, we were headed to Galway for a week. So this was the Last Hurrah for the wedding crowd.

Tracy and I hooked back up at the restaurant. She immediately recognized that I was, as she likes to call it, "swimmy". Indeed I was, I confirmed. And I planned to get swimmy like Mark Spitz, yo.

Dinner was outstanding. I had a spicy penne arrabiata that, while it would come back to haunt me the next day, was immensely enjoyable at the time. There was wine in abundance and fine conversation all around. One relative of Tom's actually recognized me from my t-shirt, which he had seen me wearing on the mountain. It's this great shirt I have that reads, on the front, "I Guess There Never Was A Curse". Curious, he asked me what it said on the back. I raised the loose Hawaiian shirt I was wearing over it to reveal the punchline: "They Just Sucked For 85 Years".

That was a big hit.

(At left, Kara and Ryan at the restaurant, having a party of their own.)

Once dinner was complete, it was time to head out on the town.

Our first thought was to head back to Moran's, but that venue, which had been merely congested before, was now truly clowns-in-a-phone-booth packed. We squeaked our way through, single-file, passing from the front door directly to the back like excrement through a Canadian water fowl.

Here I am in the alleyway outside the back door to Moran's. My acquaintance there is one of the Hennessy Brothers. I don't recall his first name. I just remember that he and his two brothers (it was two, right?) were childhood friends of Tom's family who attached themselves to our party like Irish Ambassadors of Drunkenness and Goodwill. The fact that everyone referred to them, literally, as "The Hennessy Brothers" -- an appellation appropriate for a gang of Irish Mafia arm-breakers -- just added to the ambience of the occasion.

Eventually, we wound up at O'Malley's, just up the street. As you can see from the picture, it was pretty packed. Our party, an assortment of those among Kristin's and Tom's respective relatives who were up for serious partying, made camp way in the back.

I don't recall every detail of that stretch of the evening. I know that both Gaelic Football and American Baseball were discussed. I know that I put back at least another half-dozen pints along with several double Jameson's (neat, always neat). And I know that I did several stirring renditions of the "Mighty Wingman" song from that Bud commercial. The Irish guys there were unfamiliar with the "wingman" concept -- no idea how it came up -- and when someone else educated them as to its meaning, I volunteered to draw them a picture in song, as it were. I think it was around the third or fourth full-throated rendition that I tired of the attention and begged out.

Some time in the early morning -- perhaps around 1:30 AM? -- Tracy suggested it might be time to call it quits. Wanting to avoid crossing the line between good-naturedly shit-faced and... and... that other place I go... I acquiesced and bade farewell to our companions.

Tracy drove us back to the Knockranny and we made our way up to our room, where we would slumber peacefully to rest up for our--

"Yah, well, what ah ya gonna do? Ya got Steinbrennah with all his money..."

It was my uncle Joe, in the Knockranny bar. My Yankees were under attack. Sleep would have to wait.

We ducked into the bar to find Joe, Tommy, and Gabe (Mary Jnr.'s husband) keeping the bartender awake. I pulled up a stool next to Gabe and proceeded to school everyone on the respective merits of the Yankees and Red Sox franchises. Gabe was incensed that I was born in the Boston area but had become a Yankees fan. But he was even more incensed about that terrible president Bush and all the trouble he was causing. The bartender, a feisty old guy who quite literally had nothing else to do but stand there and listen to us, was also chomping at the bit to engage on this topic. So we Bush bashed together happily. Until I brought up religion, a topic upon which my interlocutors did not find my views quite so agreeable.

We all parted ways amiably, however, around... well, honestly, I have no idea.

It was a helluva full day, though. That much I know. We had climbed seen a mountain, become fans of a new sport, been disapproved of by genuine crotchety locals, and eaten a fabulous meal. In addition, I had done some impromptu karaoke, gotten truly and righteously hammered, and had a couple of invigorating arguments.

Does it get better than that? I think not.

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