Biking Day 1

(not from my journal)

I got Emily situated in the hostel and then I finally left the bike shop around 1ish. I was really worried I was starting out too late. So I was all confident as I made my way through the streets of Dublin and out to the highway. I was supposed to be on the N6; unfortunately, I ended up on the N7 and didn’t figure this out until I had gone well over 8 miles. It was so scary. The N7 is six lanes wide with a lane on the outside for Bikes and Buses. I did not like being put together with huge commuter buses. I prayed… a lot.

I finally pulled over and asked directions at a B&B. The woman had no idea where I wanted to get to (mainly because I could not pronounce one of the town names correctly), so she went upstairs to ask another woman. That woman instructed me to follow the N7 just a little bit further. So I took her directions and headed back out on the N7, until I realized that the “little bit further” part was actually a part of the highway that bikes are not allowed on. The honking Mac trucks and speeding cars quickly made me aware of this fact. So I turned around, now going in the opposite direction with even more cars beeping and then ran for my life across the highway pushing my bike in front of me. I made it to median, took a deep breath and ran across the other side of the highway. Needless to say, I peddled quite quickly back to safety of the small town I had just left and ended up asking directions from a cabbie. He spent 10 minutes trying to figure out a way for me to get back on course without killing myself, and I finally asked him if he could just drive me to a good starting point. He was nice enough to go along with it and we had an interesting talk on the 30-minute drive over to where I should have been. So after that it was smooth sailing….oh wait. Wrong day. No, I was definitely lost for the rest of the day because Ireland does not have street signs. NONE! No names whatsoever. Just signs pointing to the next town. It took me at least a few days and about 20 wrong way kilometers to master the art of navigating around Ireland.