Rugby Road Trip West

Last weekend, Rod's rugby team had their annual road trip.  Last year, the team went to France!!!  This year, it was Sligo.  Not France, but still a good time and I'm sure much cheaper!  The plan was pretty simple.  Take 1/2 of Friday off, get on a bus, ride to Inishscrone in Co. Sligo to our hotel.  Have dinner and entertain thirty 12 year olds and be entertained by 19 Irish Dads.  Go to a rugby match on Saturday in Ballina, right across the border in Co. Mayo.  Do some mini-golf and go-karting and repeat the dinner and entertainment tasks from the previous night.   Get up on Sunday and take the bus to Sligo and have a match there and get on the bus and go home.  We changed things up a little by having Martha, J.J., & Grace drive along and participate in some of the things.  Plans are nice...Reality usually delivers something slightly different, but that isn't always bad.

The Bus Ride
The bus ride started in typical Irish fashion.  Late.  We left about an hour later than we planned after the bus got stuck in traffic and slightly lost.  Once the crew was on board, the trip was uneventful.  The kids were pretty wired and there was some singing (more on that later).  It took us about 3 hours to cross the country on a series of motorways (read: expressway) and national roads (read: 2-lane roads with no livestock).  Martha tried to follow, but the bus lost her in bus lanes.  Probably best, since our driver got misdirected a couple of times and made some awkward reverse around the corner moves.  This is the infamous driver's test maneuver that I swear I could never understand why anyone would want to execute.  Now I know and now I know why I'm not a bus driver.

The First Night

Martha and the two amigos had other accommodations.   Martha's childhood friend, Mary, married a fine Irish lad Enda.  Enda is from Sligo and they have a cottage in the area, although they reside in Miami.  Martha, J.J., & Grace went to there to set up shop.  The kids were delighted to have a pet for the weekend.  His name was Sparky.  Sparky resided in the back garden and loved to be petted and fed apples.

Rod and Joe checked into the hotel and went to a team dinner.  After the dinner was over, the young lads went out to spend their unearned Euros at the local Leisure World (read: video game and entertainment parlor).  The older lads hung out and to see if the Guinness truly gets better as you have more of them.  (Confirmed)  It was a delightful evening for Joe, but Rod didn't win as much as he had hoped.

Saturday

After 9 months in Ireland, you get used to Irish plumbing...then you find some new Irish plumbing.  Probably not familiar to most Americans, but the Irish love (OK, maybe tolerate) their electric showers.  What do you do if you have poor water pressure and don't have the capacity to deliver a steady stream of hot water to a shower, put in one of these fellas.  It's the Irish answer to the on-demand hot water heater.  Our hotel had one of these.  Like all Irish bathrooms, the power switch to this baby was outside the bathroom, next to the light switches.  I turned this on and within 10 seconds a thick steam was pouring from the shower.  The joyous thoughts of cleaning the cobwebs generated by the previous night's Guinness propelled me into the shower.  The scalding temperature of the water propelled my exit twice as fast.  Must adjust temperature down...  After two or three minutes of turning the gauge lower and lower with no success, I reached the solid blue marker indicating cold water and like a miracle, the water turned ice cold.  Some further testing told me that I had two obvious choices in that shower

1. Die from 3rd degree burns.
2. Wish I were dead taking an ice cold shower.

Not accepting the alternatives, I managed to get cleaned up using the sink.  This sink had a hot and cold tap and was close to the shower, so I turned both taps on and would fill up my small travel soap dish with water with a little hot and a little cold and pour it over me.  It took a while and was not the pleasant shower I was looking for, but it worked.  I'm sure when Rod comes back from Ireland, he'll have learned some of the colorful language so prevalent in Irish culture.  Truth is, he will have learned some of that language listening to me in that shower in Inishcrone.

Off to breakfast, then to the bus for the trip to Ballina (pronounced:  bal-i-na') for our first match.  "Hey, where's the bus?"  Our first logistical challenge.  Turns out the great price we got on the transportation on this trip was not the result of the poor state of the Irish economy and desperate bus drivers.  It was the result of them not providing any services on Saturday.  Some of the Dads drove to Inishcrone, so we had a few vehicles.  We proceeded to load up the kids in each of the vehicles we had moved them to Ballina for the match.  Martha provided the last trip with 5 Dad's, J.J., & Grace in our vehicle.

The matches went well.  We brought two teams, one won, one lost.  The most entertaining aspect was probably the sheep dog that spent the entire warm-up time trying to herd the players.  When they were in the scrum, he would lay down and watch, but as soon as the ball came out and people spread out, he was rounding them up.  It was all really fun till this dog and two of his buddies decided to mark our equipment bags and clothes that were laying next to the field.

It was then off to the mini-golf and go-karting.  Out in the middle of nowhere, some farmer decided that a par-3 golf course, driving range, & go-kart track was a much better business plan than sheep.  It was a blast.  Nothing like getting 30 kids and 10 Dads through the course 5 at a time.  It took a couple of hours, but it was a blast.  

The Rames' decided to run to the beach near the cottage to explore.  Our hosts called the beach Dinosaur Beach because there are always lots of bones on the rocks.  It turns out that sheep and cows are pretty dumb and have a tendency to walk off the cliff and don't survive.  Their bones end up as souvenirs for visitors that can't pass up a find like that on a beach-combing mission.  In our case, we think we found the sheepdog too, as the jaw bone we found looked like that of a canine.  Here's Grace with her Ram's horn.

It was then back off to the hotel for an end of the year awards dinner.  Martha and the kids joined us for a typical Irish dinner with 3 types of potatoes.

The kids had another eventful night at Leisure World and the hotel grounds/dunes/beach, while the Dads congregated in one the rooms to determine whether Guinness in a can actually gets better as you have more of them (confirmed).  It was then that I found out what Irish men do when they head out with their friends.  They sing.  There was a group of about 12 lads in the room and the conversation slowed for a fleeting second.  Next thing you know, Pat had broken into an Irish drinking song.  As soon as the others realized what he was singing, they joined him.  The singing last about an hour as a number of them started their own tunes.  It was strange and delightful at the same time.  

There wasn't a whole lot of tight supervision of the young lads, but the visit by the Guarda (read: police) wasn't as dramatic as the stories to be told as the years go by.  The main topic of conversation at breakfast was how to discuss the situation with Moms.  When one found out, they would all eventually find out, so we'd better figure out what the official story was to be and stick with it.

Sunday

On Sunday, a miracle happened.  The electric shower decided to work.  I'm currently filling out the paperwork to file with the Vatican to get it beatified:  St. Mira.  On top of that the bus came to pick us up on time and take us to Sligo for our match.  Sligo didn't have a big team, so we split our teams up and the A team played the 1st half and the B team the second.  In the end, I think we lost in a close match, but they had a couple of 13 year olds that looked like they were 16, so it wasn't a real even match.  No worries, it all ended with smiles.

The Rames' separated from the team at that point.  The team boarded the bus and headed for Dublin.  We thought since we had come that far, we might as well spend a couple of hours exploring.  And sitting right behind us was a very large hill with a big bump on the top.  The hill is called Knocknarea.  The bump is allegedly Queen Maeve's Tomb.  It was a short walk (45 minutes) up the big hill to the top through pastures and old rock walls and buildings.  Tradition says that you bring a rock with you to the top and we didn't fight that tradition.  We added to the already huge cache of rocks.

It was then time to head back.  The weather started to turn, but we managed to catch a few beautiful rainbows on the drive.  It was a delightful weekend in Sligo with new experiences for all.