Driving & Rides

OK so what have I been up to in the last 6 weeks or so? First off I need to post some of the St Patrick photos I forgot last time.

 

Basically I haven’t been up to much outside of working…I’m on the road baby & loving it.

Especially now that I’ve got a radio converter for my N95, so I don’t have to listen to the piss poor Irish radio stations anymore (I had Kylie’s song ‘Wow wow wow’ stuck in my head for over a week!!!)

Also I think I’ve worked out what the road side shrines are all about. Like pretty much anything in Ireland there are several reasons for them. The 1^st reason came to me after I realised that the small towns I’m travelling to & through are, although similar, not identical to rural New Zealand towns…They’re missing War Memorials! (I also realised this when I read the plaques on a couple of these monuments – Helpful tip there ‘When in doubt read the plaque’) The other main reason seems to be memorials to people who have passed on, I’m guessing in response to the wholly unreasonable rule these days that head stones in graveyards can’t be much bigger than a foot high. I have yet to find out if the people are buried there (I’ve read the plaques – Helpful tip: plaques aren’t as helpful as some people would have you believe).

I went to Cohb (pronounced Cove) a while back with Steffie. Cobh is famous  for 2 things; it was the last port of call for the Titanic, and it was the main leaving point for Irish immigrants to America, Canada, Oz and New Zealand. So I’m fairly sure I’m now done the round trip for at least part of my heritage.

I guess I’m getting fairly thick skinned to meeting people & then saying goodbye to them, it still sucks though! Recently Sergio went back to Spain & David & Matha started their European road trip…Big up yourselves!

I forgot to mention there is one other factor that separates Kiwi towns from their Irish counterparts…Castles! (Sorry the one between  Auckland & Thames doesn’t count)  This is Castle Caher one of the largest castles in Ireland, but I think I prefer this old Mill in Castletownroche (Yes that is all meant to be one word) specially the cool office over the cannel.

A few weeks ago Josue, David & I went to the Modified Motors car show. Quite a few decent cars but modified cars are not really my thing, I’m more of a race, prototype & super car kinda guy, unfortunately Ireland doesn’t really have a proper car show so beggars can’t be chooses; still I managed to find a few things I liked.

It was a cheep day as well as we managed to find a fence to jump just next to where the Pro Drift boys were practicing, we hung around there for a good 45 min or so which was cool as there was only 10 or so spectators & as the lads didn’t know the course very well we got to see quite a few wrong-ins. When we came back out to watch them later in the arvo there were several hundred people watching them & not a monkey’s chance in hell of seeing anything.

Finally one of the things I was looking forward to when I moved to Ireland was the live music, I been to a few bars & heard some great music, Crane lane for great jazz, rock & one of the best smoking/chatting areas in town. Preachers & An Brog for great cover bands & students, but one of the coolest was under my nose the whole time. Sin e (Yes ‘e’ seems to be a word on it’s own….go figure) is literary straight across the road from my front door so it was only a matter of time before I stumbled in there.For traditional Irish music, colourful friendly locals and cheep Kronenberg this place can’t be beat, plus it’s the oldest pub in town.

I’ll be keeping it fairly low key for the next month as I’m off to Spain in a month….HELL YEAH!!!

PS: I got all homesick & Arty last week & ended up doing this