Disclaimer: This document is for entertainment only and is not intended to instruct or educate anyone about anything. If you choose to emulate the stupid things I do you are on your own, and I take no responsibility for the consequences of your actions.

Trip Report: The next day was Monday and I awoke well rested to a bustling Dublin. Dermot's mom was busy tending to her chores in between serving breakfast to the foreign students who were mulling about in the dining area.

When she was done I snuck out back and took a self portrait in her lovely back garden.

After breakfast I packed up and got on the M50 to get out of town. The M50 is a great big semi-loop that encircles the edges of Dublin that don't abut the sea.

As usual the traffic on the M50 was thick, but I was in no hurry and there was plenty to entertain me, like signs on trucks that you wouldn't likely see in the US. This one hints at the presence of a sense of humor and the absence of the FCC in Irish society.

Eventually I got on to the M4, which turns into the N4 (the M just means it is a divided highway) and eventually the N6 to Galway. I stopped in a small town on the N6 to pick up some food stuffs for later in the day.

Based on my interactions with Irish people over the next few days I would say that a good majority of them share this sentiment.

After many miles of entertaining and demanding driving on the relatively good N6 I arrived in the funky college town of Galway

It was quaint, but I didn't find it that interesting, and I was eager to get out into the more remote areas of the countryside, so I stopped only long enough to check my email and have giant slab of beef for lunch. After that I was off toward the wilds of Connemara. I drove WNW out of Galway for a while before stopping at a lovely roadside park in Oughterard.

As in Dalkey Quarry there were berries to snack on here, so I hung out for a bit and strolled around this wet, green scene.

Just outside of Oughterard it started to rain, and the countryside became truly boggy, lumpy and wild for the first time on my trip.

The skies in Ireland are like a roving sprinkler system. It will typically rain for only a few minutes before the sun comes out again allowing travelers to revel in the emerald results of these frequent rains.

The width of the road in the last picture is not a Photoshop trick. The "lanes" really are about exactly as wide as my tiny Ford Fiesta. Most people in Ireland are sensible enough to drive small cars. On the occasions when you encounter a bus, tractor or truck going in the opposite directions you pretty much have to slow way down or just get the hell out of the way altogether. Most of the time, however, these roads are just good, clean fun at 100km/hr.

I shot up through the wild heart of Connemara and got to Kylemore Abbey around 6 p.m. The Abbey was closed, but I wasn't all that interested in its interior, so no big loss.

Here is a shot of some of the high country in Connemara National Park, which is just south of Kylemore Abbey

My purported objective was a certain boulder on the north coast of Connemara, and I needed to boogie if I was ever going to see said boulder before dark, so I once again boogied down the road at a high rate of speed.

North of Kylemore Abbey the countryside got wilder still and the roads got even narrower to the point where any kind of stripes would have just been silly

On these roads I took the extra precaution of driving with my high beams on as any encounter between two cars going in opposite directions would likely result in the need for one of the cars to back up for a ways.

At some point on my way to the north coast of Connemara I found this gnarly looking rapid. After staring at it for a few seconds it had me thinking yummy thoughts about how much fun it would be to run it in my canoe. Mmmmm.

Finally, with about an hour of daylight left, I got to the north coast of Connemara.

I parked the Fiesta at the end of a narrow, grassy road and commenced to hiking.

I'm not sure why I look so distressed in that picture. Maybe it was the combination of being buffeted by the North Atlantic wind while hiking in the treacherous bog after driving like a madman all day. In any case, to hike in the bog is to learn the definition of the term "bogged down." The grass is so lush and thick that it can be difficult to tell if your next step will land on solid ground or in knee deep water.

This sign would be appropriate as a warning in most corporate offices in America, methinks.

I did see the bull shortly after passing the sign, but he gave me no grief. More noteworthy was the lovely scenery along the trail.

When I finally arrived at the boulder that I had arbitrarily chosen as my destination, the light was too crap for pictures and the tide was in too far for much good climbing. I climbed just enough to stay warm, had a snack, enjoyed the beginnings of a lovely sunset and then headed back to my car. Then I zipped along the coast before stopping in a town called Roundstone. I found a Bed and Breakfast where the proprietor rented me a room for 50 Euros, ate the groceries I had bought earlier in the day, and in a properly exhausted state sacked out.