How does your garden grow?

Another very out-dated post that I've been meaning to type up for ages...

One of the first things we did after moving to our new duplex back in April was to plant a garden in the back yard. I was so excited to try out gardening now that we live practically in the Garden of Eden in terms of getting things to grow. I remember my parents attempting to garden in NM and it just didn't work out--poor soil, no rain, hilly yard, and DRY air just don't add up to happy growing things. (And many of us in the Tonks family seem to have anti-Green Thumbs, which doesn't help either. Keeping houseplants alive does not come easily for many of us.)

So, the tales people told of just being able to stick seeds in the ground and watch them spring up and grow with virtually no effort required here in IL were intriguing. We had a ready-made garden plot from the last people who lived here before us, so we decided to move forward with full speed ahead and get some veggies a'growing.

We planted (almost) everything as seeds rather than buying seedlings. Then, just a day or so after we planted the seeds, we had TORRENTIAL rain which probably swept the seeds away in rivulets to new locations in the garden in some cases. So, when thing started popping up a few weeks later, they weren't in neat little rows for the most part and I often couldn't really tell what was weed and what was vegetable. We got a few HUGE sunflowers growing--those must have been from seeds leftover from last year, since our neighbor told us that the former residents had planted a bunch of sunflowers. One of them grew taller than the roof!

There was also a row of what turned out to be tree seedlings, plus a bunch of plain old weeds. I let them grow because I thought they might be something I planted--they sprung up so tall that I thought for sure they weren't weeds (most of our weeds are low and sprawly it seemed like). In the end I pulled them out, but not before they dumped a bunch of weed seeds everywhere--I guess next year's weeding will be intense.

Anyways, it turns out that most of the stuff did grow pretty well, without *too* much work. I rarely had to water--in fact, we had a very cool, wetter than normal summer, so most of the time there was too MUCH water around. I DID have to weed a fair amount, however. And it turns out that harvesting the vegetables is a lot of work in and of itself.

It was a great feeling, the first time I brought in my bounty straight from the backyard. I even took a picture of my firstfruits--er, firstveggies? of my garden efforts. (I rarely get out the camera, so obviously this was a big deal.)

We had beans coming out of our ears for a while, and PLENTY of zucchini (including one monstrous one that was hiding for a long time before I finally picked it so I let it get too big). We had some lettuce, some bell peppers, and (later in the season--they took FOREVER to ripen because it wasn't as hot as usual), oodles of tomatoes. Rounding things out were a few eggplants, some summer squash, and various herbs.

Since I am working with the Young Women's organization at church, I am trying to complete the Personal Progress Program that the teenage girls I work with are doing-- I decided to make my garden one of my Value Projects (the one for "Faith"). The instructions for the project said to think of faith like a seed as I plant, care for, and harvest a garden. So here are some of my thoughts on what I learned about faith by planting and growing seeds:

• Early torrential downpours can be dangerous for the newly planted seed. Of course the seed needs water, but too much all at once is overwhelming. ("line upon line")
• Sometimes you have to wait and let things grow before you can tell if they are "good" seeds or bad seeds (like the wheat and the tares). But as soon as you recognize something as a weed, you need to pull it out fast.
• You may have a "legacy" from your forebears--things you have been taught as a child, etc. In some cases this is great--fun sunflowers springing up unbidden. But in some cases they will turn out to be weeds (wicked traditions of the fathers...) and will need to be removed and replaced with truths.
• It can seem to take forever before the first plants produce their yields, but eventually you'll have more zucchini than you know what to do with. (my cup runneth over!)
• Weeds are much easier to pull out when they are small. (Repent early!)
• Weeds are easier to pull in moist ground-- we have to nourish our faith carefully, and then it is easier to root out sin and deception.
• It is easier to grow things in good soil (a good background, family, etc.) but even poor soils can be improved with work and compost.
• It takes work to harvest it too (a lot, actually)! The fruits of our faith may be waiting right there for us to pluck, but we DO have to actually pluck them.
• If you let the veggies sit on the plant in the garden without using them, they rot. (Faith cannot be stagnant--it needs to be used!)

The Turkey and the Trotting

Let's not beat around the bush. I ran an 8k on Thanksgiving! I am immensely proud of myself--it was my first real race, and I finished with what was (for me) a very good time. 49:39 to be specific--just barely under 10 minutes per mile for about 5 miles. There were something like 3,000 people running that day, so it was quite the rush to be there in the thick of things. And, it helped me to eat lots of pie with abandon later in the day.

Above is me after the race, still with my awesome "bib" on. If you reeeeally want to see a picture of me crossing the finishline, I will direct you to this page. But be warned that it is not exactly a flattering angle, and this on top of the inherent un-glamor of a very sweaty and tired me.

The race was the Raleigh Turkey Trot. Kevin and I went to Raleigh, NC to visit my little brother for Thanksgiving (and met my parents there too, who had also come for a visit.) He's been living there for 2 years, but we'd never been out to see him and his little house. I have a cousin living in Raleigh also, so we got to visit with her too.

We had a fantastic time. He gave us rides in his Porsche (yes, PORSCHE) and I helped him do some interior decorating (his house is OBVIOUSLY inhabited by a bachelor--virtually nothing on the walls, etc.). AND, we got my Dad to play Rock Band with us, which it turns out he really liked. (For anyone who knows my dad, this will be a humorous revelation.)

And of course, the feast itself was splendid--thanks to Mom! *Sigh* It is so good to have Moms around for holidays! But not just for the baking--it was good to visit with her and with everyone, especially because I won't get to see any of them at Christmastime this year.

Scooped

Doh. Doh. Doh.

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/46/19381.full.pdf+html

Share the Road!

So the other day I was biking home from my lab, as I often do. Actually, it was several weeks ago--it has gotten too cold for me to brave biking of late. But as you may have noticed, I often get a tad behind on updating my blog. Since I find the incident highly blog worthy, however, I will tell it despite being immensely tardy.

So, there I was, biking home like I always do. I was on a four lane stretch of road (two lanes each direction with a little island in the middle), approaching a stop light up ahead, shortly before which the right hand lane becomes a right-turn only lane. As always, I was in the left lane at this point because I needed to go straight through the light and didn't want to be stuck in the right lane and forced to turn right. I have found that it's best to get over to the left lane early, because changing lanes on a bike with any car traffic around can be tricky (I can't go nearly fast enough to merge into a different lane easily with cars around.)

As I approach the light, I see a lady crossing the street. She is not too far from a crosswalk, but is nonetheless blatantly jaywalking. She is walking reeeeally slow, and I can't quite tell if she's trying to wait for me to pass before she finishes crossing or not. I slow down also, so I can gauge what she is doing and decide whether to go past or stop (in the case that she doesn't stop for me.)

Suddenly, she looks at me and says, "Excuse me." I stop, mistaking the forcefulness in her voice as her desperately needing help of some kind. (I think she was just angry at me, it turns out.) She has a strong accent (Russian, I think) and so I am thinking maybe she is new or visiting and needs some sort of help. "Yes?" I say.

"Do you know the rules of bike riding?" she asks. I look at her, confused. "You are supposed to be riding in the right lane!"

"Oh, well I need to go straight through the stop light, so I'm in the left lane," I explain.

"NO!" she scolds me. "You must cross there, were the pedestrians cross." She points to the crosswalk to the right of the turn lane.

"No, bikes follow the same rules as cars," I insist, feeling extremely defensive.

"NO!" She barely lets me get a word in edgewise. "I am a bike rider too, and I know you should be here by the curb. I didn't see you as I was crossing because I didn't expect you to be there. You almost hit me!" [By the way, I did NOT almost hit her. I was going very slowly, completely prepared to stop if she did not.]

"You're not even in the crosswalk!" I protest.

"That doesn't matter. You should be on the right. It's not safe!"

Let us pause for a moment here, to savor the full irony of the situation. Here is a woman accosting me IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD (yes, we're still stopped on the road--luckily no cars were coming just then) to give me a lecture on bike safety whilst jaywalking herself.

At this point, I notice that the light has turned green and get back on my bike. "I have to go," I say.

"You look up the rules on the internet--you will see I'm right!" She yells after me.

I turn and yell back. "I will, but you look it up too! And you should get in a CROSSWALK!"

Okay, so I did not display a lot of grace at the end of this interchange. But the audacity of this lady had me steaming mad. I mean, who does that? She may have had a (slight) point in that I had changed into the left lane earlier than necessary. However, she was dead wrong that I was supposed to cross the intersection in the crosswalk! And even if she was 100% in the right, I think stopping a biker in the middle of the road to lecture them equals complete lunacy.

Okay, rant over. You may all now commence in telling me how right I am. :)

Halloween '09

Can you tell what we are? Ten points to the first person to get it right. We had fun at our Halloween party at church, but were disappointed that not a one trick-or-treater came to our house, even though we live in a neighborhood and I know there are kids around. I even put up some pumpkin garland things and turned on the porch light. Ah well. More Reese's peanut butter cups for me...although that's not necessarily a good thing, at least as far as fitting into my pants is concerned.

Gum Sutures and Broken Bumpers

So, today I had gum surgery. It was to remove the "excess tissue" that grew in my lower right wisdom tooth area after the tooth was extracted and which has been getting irritated and infected every so often since then. (Some of you may recall the horrendous nightmare of a wisdom teeth extraction I had a couple of years ago. They were very infected and difficult to remove. In some places I had big lumps of tissue grow back where teeth had been--because of the trauma in the extraction? I don't know.) The surgery went well--just local anesthetics, and it only took 30 minutes or something.

..but THEN, I went out to the car to drive home and pulled out of the spot in the parking garage. I guess I was distracted by the fact that half of my face was numb and my mouth was stuffed with gauze, because I failed to notice the large post on my left and ended up hitting it with the front bumper as I swung around. There was a horrible crunching noise, and then the bumper fell off! Well, almost--it was still hanging on by one corner. I called Kevin and he came and helped me tie the bumper back on with some rope and then drive it straight over to the body shop where we had the door fixed just a few months ago.

*Sigh* The gum procedure is turning out to be pretty pricey after all! I guess it could have been worse, though. At least I only damaged my *own* car and not someone else's. It sure was embarrassing, though. I couldn't even smile at the people who stopped to ask if I needed help due to my half-numb face and droopy mouth.

A Hopeful Turn of Events

As my friend Beth recently reminded me, it's been a long time since I've posted anything at all on my blog. And even though I'm not traveling anywhere cool, I suppose maybe some of you are curious about what I'm up to...so here we go on a brief tour of Mindy's life for the last 3 or 4 months! I guess, now that I'm done gallivanting around the world, I can take up the banner of the Boring again. ;)

Let's see, what did I do with the rest of my summer? Well, I somehow forced myself to go back into my lab again and do some research. It was hard. Really hard, actually, after having so much fun seeing spectacular places, to have to resign myself to my icky blecky life of frustrating lab work. But, I was already treading on thin ice with my advisor, having taken SO much time off this year for travel, so I had no choice but to show up and get to work. I can't say I worked particularly hard all summer--it was a constant trial to force myself into work every day, but I did at least show up.

I've been working on a new strategy to get my project to work. It's basically the last idea I have for what to try on this project--the last glimmer of hope for getting anything out of the last 4.5 years' worth of research. Actually, I still think it has a chance of working, but I ran into some snags (as always) as I was trying this new strategy. It involved building a whole new confocal microscope setup, which was giving me weird data, so I had to do some controls which also turned out weird, and now I have to do controls to figure out why my controls failed...you get the picture.

Some of you may be wondering why I have been working on one project for so long. Basically, it's because my advisor doesn't like to consider projects that aren't very high impact (meaning they can get published in Science or Nature, or maybe PNAS). And high impact ideas usually mean super impossible ideas. Such is the case with my original project. It would be a very big deal if only we could get it to work, but obviously getting it to work has not been a walk in the park. I've asked a couple of times, admittedly without much forcefulness, if I could pursue some interesting tangents or side projects that have come up along the way (which could have yielded papers in some lesser journals, but hey, at least it would published!), and each time my advisor has said he'd rather I just worked on the main "big" project and get it working. It's a good strategy for him to advance his reputation, but it stinks for his students because it means we have all our eggs in one basket and most of us aren't getting the publications we need to graduate. While my advisor is a good guy in general, he's also not that useful in terms of offering help and practical advice. But I won't go into all of the reasons why our lab is dysfunctional just now. Suffice it to say, it's been frustrating.

But, the good news is that I have recently (like, just a few days ago) acquired a new project which has much more promise. This is what happened: Paul (that's my advisor) saw a couple of interesting papers that he thought we should talk about at group meeting, and assigned a couple of my coworkers to give presentations about them. During one of the presentations, Ben (currently the most senior student in the lab--he started a year before me) suggested a couple of simple experiments we could do based on the ideas in the paper. Paul got really excited about these experiments (you never can quite predict which ideas will get him excited and which he'll turn down flat, but I digress...) He said if any of the new students (who didn't have real projects yet) were interested in working on them to let him know.

I thought the new project looked very promising--and simple, with a good chance of actually working (kind of a novelty in our lab). This is the kind of projects we dub as "gimme" papers. I was jealous of this gimme paper being given to some new student, but I didn't think Paul would really let me switch projects since he's so enamored with the idea of getting that original one working. But, with some encouragement from Ben (good old Ben), I decided to ask Paul if I could work on it. Ben's reasoning was thus: even if Paul said no (which we both found likely), I would have at least put my oar in, and in a few months when my original project (probably) finally bit the dust, I could ask more forcefully for a simpler project, pointing to his earlier denial to help me make the case that he owed it to me now. But, to my surprise, Paul thought it was a great idea for me to work on this project and handed it right over. (And, it turns out, Paul said no to another student--one who is not nearly as senior as me but is not new either. Which makes me feel specialer than him. Ha!)

I'm excited about it. Hopefully, it actually pans out. If not, at least it will be obvious in the first few months and then I can abandon it as opposed to spending years on it before knowing if it's ever going to work. I am not actually giving up on my original project yet--I'm going to work on that too, and train one of the new students on it in the process (which I think means Paul is thinking I will graduate relatively soon and that he still wants a student on that project after I leave, which is a good sign--the fact that Paul is thinking about me and graduation in any sort of proximity of time).

It is a little sad because the project is on an entirely different subject than my original one, and there's a whole huge body of research I have to get familiar with, and FAST. But at least it's interesting and, dare I say? even exciting! for once. I haven't felt excited about my research in a veerrrrrry long time. So, hold your breath everyone, and say a little prayer for meee!

Ireland Day 12: Aengus craic and Bunratty feasts...and Goodbye to the Land of Eire

Our last full day in Ireland... We HAD to make sure it was a good one! We set out early from our B&B to see the 2,000 year old fortress on a 300 foot cliff known as Dun Aengus--but not before enjoying another fantastic Irish breakfast, complete with the yummiest scones I have EVER tasted. Man, I should have eaten more of those. But, I was too busy stuffing my face with french toast and eggs and everything else under the sun.

Anyways, luckily, our B&B was literally right across the way from the entrance to the fort's visitor's center. Kevin and I had thought to ride our bikes up the hill to the cliffside, but alas, they made us dismount before going up. We we booked it on up on foot, though, trying to be the first ones to arrive. We passed an older couple on the way up and arrived at the scene with the place completely to ourselves!





And what a sight, really--the ring fort is perched right at the edge of a dramatic cliffside, with the ocean pounding far, far below. The wind was blowing so we had to be careful not to step *too* close to the cliff's edge. Still, we enjoyed some mighty fine scenery all to ourselves. Awesome! That was a big perk of staying the night on the island--this was before any of the ferries had arrived, so there were no day-trippers on the island yet and things were quiet.



We took it all in for a while, and then just as we were leaving, we ran into that older couple, who turned out to be a charming Irish two-some from Galway. They struck up a conversation with us, asking us how we liked Ireland and how we liked the Aran Islands. They told us about how very, very poor the country was when they were young and how different things are now. They talked about religion and their disgust with the recently publicized abuses of the nuns and priests in Irish Catholic schools, and about politics (of course they thought Obama was great and wondered if we liked him.) I was amazed at how many topics they spanned (including the controversial ones you usually avoid with people you just met--religion, politics, etc.) and how much they loved to just talk. We did get to join in on some "craic" after all! It was fun to experience that gift of gab, but we had a boat to catch and eventually just had to break in and say we had to go. (I wondered for a while if we'd ever manage to get away!)



We were now running late, so we ran back down the hill, checked out of the B&B, and hopped on our bikes to pedal back to the dock. We had to go swiftly up those hills for fear of missing the boat (we'd had plenty of stuck-on-the-island experiences already for our tastes). To our great pride, we made it with a few minutes to spare even. We got on the RIGHT boat, and had an uneventful ride back to mainland Ireland. Except for the fact that we were beat red and still breathing hard, and deathly thirsty. (I convinced one of the crew members to come down and man the snack bar and sell us some soda, thankfully.) We took turns standing in front of the air vent and eventually cooled back down.

In Doolin we had a quick bite to eat--soup, bread, and ice cream if I recall correctly--and got back in the car (which was not stolen or damaged in any way--hurray! Doolin is a very small place, so there wasn't much reason to worry, but I still managed to do so anyway.)

Then, we were on our way towards Shannon (where we would fly out the following morning.) We went a slightly longer route so that we could go by way of the Burren, a unique part of Ireland full of strange rocky landscapes and lots of wild flowers. We passed a Dolmen (a burial site marked by huge stones laid on top of each other, kind of Stonehenge looking) called Poulnabrone and stopped for a few pictures.

We eventually ended up at the village of Bunratty (what a name, eh?), home of Bunratty Castle. Bunratty is a more touristy, restored, a little kitschy type castle, but it was fun to see still. It was rather crowded, and that made climbing the n-a-r-r-o-w spiral staircases...interesting. Let's just say I'm very glad for the thirty pounds I lost last year or else I may not have made it back out without getting to know my fellow tourists much more personally than I would prefer. Next we enjoyed the restored 19th century cottages and farms at the Bunratty Folk Park (doesn't quite fit in with the medieval castle theme, but eh well).

We went and checked in at our B&B, rested up a bit, and then went back to the castle for... a medieval banquet inside the castle! Okay, it was a bit hokey, but still it sounded like a lot of fun. It also happened to be our last night in Ireland, AND the night before our anniversary (yes, we flew home on our actual anniversary--how romantic, right?) so we were celebrating that too. So we splurged for the medieval banquet tickets. Looking back on it, it probably wasn't really worth it. They also offered an "Irish" night dinner with lots of Irish music and dancing (not in the castle though). I think in the end I might have liked that one better, but I couldn't resist the idea of eating a banquet in an actual castle, so...that's what we did. It was fun--they had a bunch of madrigal singers and a harp and fiddle thing, with servers all in costume who called you "m'lady" while they filled your glass (they kept trying to feed us mead, but luckily they also had punch for the kids). They made us eat with our hands and they threw one of the guests in the dungeon..the whole shebang. It was fun, just not quite 50 euros fun.

And with that, we said goodbye to our last real day in Ireland! All that was left the next morning was one last Full Irish gorging, followed by returning the rental car and taking another looooong overseas flight back to the good old Flatland, USA. We took the L to Union station, and then the Amtrak back from Chicago to Champaign, followed by a cab back to our home sweet home.

On the whole, Ireland was really fantastic. I was surprised to find that I didn't completely love every second of Ireland the way I thought I might, though. Maybe it was because I got so sick at the beginning, or maybe it was the stress of that whole ferry ordeal. Maybe I felt a little guilty for taking all that time off of work. Or maybe it was just the crazy driving/navigating situation. But for some reason the trip was a little more stressful than I would have liked. (Not to mention, expensive. Nothing is cheap in Ireland!) I don't mean that I didn't totally love it, because I did. I'm sooooo glad I got to go, and I think Ireland has TONS of interesting things to do and see and lots of touristing stuff to offer....but, if I had to choose between going back to Ireland or going someplace new, I'd probably choose the someplace new. I guess it would depend on where the someplace was, though...But you get the idea.

That being said, if any of you ever have a husband who gets a paper accepted into a conference in Ireland and has the university paying for his trip anyway and you have to decide whether or not you should go with him...well, you know what the answer is, right?

Ireland Day 11: Getting to Inishmore

Tuesday morning we had our final breakfast with wonderful John the B&B host. We had a fairly long drive ahead of us to get to the location of our next adventure, and so we left early to allow for LOTS of extra driving time. The plan was to stop and see the Cliffs of Mohrer on the way to Doolin, where we would catch a ferry to the Aran Islands.

Despite leaving more than an hour earlier than google maps said I needed to, we *barely* had time to see the Cliffs. Part of the route included taking a car ferry, which I guess took a little longer than expected. But the main problem were those crazy tiny curvy roads, as always. We in fact probably shouldn't have stopped at the Cliffs at all--as it was, we had to run (literally) from the parking lot to the viewing area, shoot a few pictures, and then run back to the car. I hate doing site-seeing like that, like I was just checking things off a list or something, but alas we had no choice as we were REALLY out of time. The Cliffs of Mohrer are indeed spectacular, but they are also very crowded with tourists, and they charged us like 12 euros or something to park. In retrospect, maybe we should have just skipped it.

Anyways, we did pull into the harbor at Doolin just in the nick of time to pick up our ferry tickets and dash over to the dock. The tide was too low for the ferry to come all the way to the dock, so they shuttled us over in little speeder boats. The ferry was bigger, but still not what I was imagining a "ferry" to be like. There wasn't a lot of seating, and we were sitting outside. Oh well, though--the sun was fairly bright that day, but we did have a good view of the ocean and coastline.

Okay, some background information is needed here about the Aran Islands. There are three large islands of the coast of Ireland in the west (much bigger than the Skelligs). They are very rocky, but pretty much flat for the most part (at least compared to the Skelligs anyway). People have lived on them in larger numbers since the 17th century (apparently many fled here during the persecution of Oliver Cromwell). The people layered sand and seaweed on top of the rocky ground to create soil for farming potatoes. The islands have historically been very, very poor and people struggled to survive on the rocky earth. Their relative isolation preserved a lot of culture, however, and they are still strongholds of native Irish traditional life and language. In fact, the Islands are what is known as a Gaeltacht area--which are certain regions of Ireland where Gaelic is the official language. Road signs and so forth are in Gaelic, and the residents all speak Gaelic on a day-to-day basis (although they speak English too.)

There are three different islands that are collectively called the Aran islands. I've included a map so that you can see what I'm talking about. We left from thebit of mainland on the right of the map pictured above (not from Galway, which is at the top of the map). From right to left (heading away from mainland Ireland), there is Inisheer (the smallest of the three), then Inishmaan, then Inishmore (the furthest away and biggest). [By the way, there are lots of different spellings of these names--I think the map spells them differently, but I've written the more phonetic spellings.] Inishmore is where most of the tourists go, as it is much bigger and more built up (not that it is very built up though!) and has more ruins and such to see. That is where we were headed. I had already booked our bed and breakfast for the night in advance, since I read that it was a popular place. The plan was to rent some bicycles and tour around the island for the day, then spend the night at our B&B, going to see Dun Aengus the following morning (more on that later).

Okay, so back to the ferry. When we picked up our ticket, the lady at the desk explained that the boat would make a stop at Inisheer on the way out, where we'd have a one hour "layover." Then we'd board a second ferry and go straight to Inishmore. This was fine with us--it'd give us a chance to get some lunch on Inisheer and we could see a bit of that little island too. So we happily rode the boat out there and had a nice lunch in a pub, followed by some yummy ice cream at a little shop. (Inisheer was VERY small, by the way. It is the second most often-visited, so there are lots of people trying to sell you horse and carriage rides and stuff, but there are no cars to be seen, and the dock was VERY small and basic.) Then, we got back on a ferry at the appointed time (did I tell you they named their ferry the "Happy Hooker"?) and were on our way to Inishmore. I was happy and excited, and Kevin and I were amazed at how very very black the ocean looked. So dark and mysterious.

There were only about three or four other people on the ferry with us at this point, and they had gone down below while we stayed up top. When we'd boarded the guy asked us where we were going. I said "Inishmore" and showed him my ticket, and he'd waved us on. (Why are you telling me this, you ask? Just wait. It becomes important.) We sort of started zoning out for a while as more and more ocean went by. We started to slow down as we approached another island. I thought it was strange that I hadn't really noticed the second island and we were already stopping at the third, but I figured I must have just been too zoned out and missed it. We pulled up to some docks, which were MUCH bigger and very new looking. There were no signs on the docks, and no one made any announcement about where we were, but since we were supposed to be going straight to Inishmore after Inisheer, Kevin and I hopped off, as the ferry employees watched, not making a peep. (Do you see where this is going?)

We started walking away from the pier. As we got to the road, it was strangely quiet and empty. I expected there to be at least as many people trying to sell us pony and trap rides or rent us bicycles as on Inisheer--if not many more. But there was nobody. We kept walking. It just got even emptier. The only houses we could see were a pretty far ways off. Then I noticed our ferry, pulling out away from the dock. It wasn't turning around! It was heading straight off in the same direction as before. I started getting a sinking feeling in my stomach. Which island were we on?? I kept telling Kevin, "we MUST be on the right island. How could the crew just watch us get off on the wrong island without saying a word? They saw our tickets; they knew where we were going. Plus, this dock is big and nice and new. Why would the least visited island have a nicer dock than Inisheer? No, it's impossible for that to have happened." We walked further, towards the coast. As it rounded a bend, we could see another island off in the distance. Yep, we were on the *middle* island, not the last.

I was livid. There were tears. There was panicking. Inishmaan is NOT a big tourist destination. I didn't even know if there would be a hotel or a B&B for us to stay in, not to mention, it was probably too late to cancel our other reservation without a penalty. This was ruining everything!! I was so, so mad at those ferry operators.

Luckily, we did have cell phones, and I did have the number of the ferry company back in Doolin. I called them (thank heavens I could even get reception out there!) and explained, in some approximation of calmness, what had just happened to us. "How could they have let us get off the boat without at least announcing where we were? Why didn't they stop us since they knew our destination?" I asked the man. He told me he was sorry and that this shouldn't have happened. I told him he had to send another boat for us. He said there were no other boats leaving that day. I told him he had to fix it somehow--it was their fault. Do they expect their tourists to already know what the islands look like? Shouldn't they have a sign or an announcement or a man to check tickets as you exited? He said he'd see what he could do and call me back.

So we walked back to the dock. And we waited, and waited. I thought about calling to cancel our B&B reservation and beg for mercy, but I found that my cell phone was out of prepaid minutes! And Kevin's was out of batteries! Argh. Finally, the man called me back. (Luckily, incoming calls were free!) He said he'd tried to call me like 9 times or something, but for some reason it didn't ring. Anyways, he said we could catch a ferry from a different company that operated out of Galway (the land up at the top of the map) instead of Doolin. We could take a ferry from Inishmaan to Galway, and then wait an hour or two, then take another ferry from Galway to Inishmore. He said if we brought our receipt to him the next day, he'd reimburse the extra ticket costs. Since we pretty much had no other choice, we agreed.

So we waited in the sun for an hour or something, then rode back to Galway, where it started pouring (the weather changes fast in Ireland!). There we waited another 1 or 2 hours, then road another ferry back to Inishmore. At least the other company's ferries were MUCH more comfortable. But, I admit it, I was a total sour puss the whole time. I was soooooo upset that we were losing 5 hours of precious vacation time! Plus, I was not sure that there would be any bicycle rental places open by the time we arrived (it was about 7:30 by then if I remember right), and that was the only way to get to the B&B--it was too far to walk, and there's no such thing as a rental car or taxi around there. And, I was hungry. That probably didn't help either.

But, when we arrived, there were two men waiting right there to rent us bikes, thank heavens. I even snuck into the little grocery store and used their ATM as the lady was starting to close up. (Actually she almost locked me inside on accident, then apologized profusely.) We hesitated as to whether we should try to find a pub and get some dinner or head straight to the B&B. Worried that reception might close down at the B&B leaving us with nowhere to sleep, we decided we'd better head straight out. We got on our bikes and headed out, using the little map the bike guys had given us to navigate.

The bike ride turned out to be fairly strenuous, with some moderate hills to climb. Having lived in Flatland for the last five years, my bike legs are NOT accustomed to going up big hills! So it was a challenge, but at least the exercise brought on the endorphins and I started to feel less grumpy as we powered our way over the island. The enchanting views helped too--miles of shoreline, quaint scattered cottages, and everywhere mazes and mazes of little rock walls. It looked like a 1,000 year old labyrinth. It turns out that the walls were built by the farmers centuries ago. They weren't so much building walls as they were removing the rocks from their soil. There were so many of them that they just built all these walls everywhere. Pretty amazing to think about all that hard labor--the walls stretched out endlessly in every direction.

We finally arrived to the Kilmurvey House Bed and Breakfast, a little tired, but relieved that we had actually gotten there! The hostess wasn't around when we first got there, so we wandered into one of the sitting rooms and waited. The house was amazing. It was an old mansion converted into a B&B, and it was so fun to just poke around the various stairways and rooms. Our room (once the lady got back and gave us the key) was humongous for European standards, and had a balcony with a view of Dun Aengus. We freshened up a bit, and then the hostess knocked on the door and offered to open their little restaurant downstairs for us, since we hadn't had dinner yet and the town was all the way back near the pier. We very gratefully accepted the offer. She made us some amazing, amazing soup with amazing, AMAZING brown bread, and some delicious flatbread pizza. We were sooooo glad to eat it!

After dinner, we decided to utilize the remaining couple of hours of daylight to go on an abbreviated version of our bike tour. We meant to go to this old light house and ringfort ruin, but we took some back roads and managed to get a little lost. Well, not lost exactly--we always knew how to get back, but we never could get to that light house! We ended up going rather farther than we intended, and much of it was on bumpy, rocky dirt roads and pretty steep hills. We were downright mountain biking! Kevin was having a blast (he loves mountain biking, although I've always said I was NOT interested in that hobby). I was fairly scared but kind of exhilirated. I did get worried as night was falling, though, seeing as how we had no headlights. Luckily by then we had joined up with a real road again and didn't have to worry quite so much about seeing the rocks and holes in front of us.

As we rode, we saw several big bonfires and heard people singing and having parties. Apparently it was some sort of festival day. The guys who had rented us some bikes had mentioned that there would be bonfires with a "whole lot of crack going on." That may have sounded a little alarming, except that I had read enough guide books to know "crack" (actually spelled craic) just means conversation or chit-chat (what the Irish are famous for--the gift of gab.)

Anyways, we finally got back to the B&B, fairly exhausted, at around midnight. Thank goodness for those long summer days in Ireland!

Ireland Day 10: Skelligs!

Monday was probably my favorite day of the whole trip. It was also long and busy, so this is your warning that I cannot be held responsible for the length of this post! We also took a llllllot of pictures, so well, um...good luck getting through I guess. ;) I'll understand if you skim.

We started out early, after having a giant breakfast at our B&B of course, and drove down to what is called the "Ring of Kerry," which is a scenic route along the Kerry peninsula (very popular with the tourist buses).

We saw lots of nice scenery along the way, but the main point of our journey was to get to the little town of Portmagee, where we would hop aboard a boat headed to the Skellig Islands.

The what Islands, you are asking? The Skelligs! Skellig Michael to be specific. I had heard amazing things about Skellig Michael, so I made sure to include it on our itinerary, even though it did take up almost an entire day. Skellig Michael is this rocky, jutty-up island off the coast of Ireland where some monks decided to build a monastery back in the 7th century. They picked the Skelligs because they were so inhospitable, and the monks felt that the harder their lives were, the closer they'd be to God. So they carved stairs out of the rock face and built these little stone beehive huts on the very top and lived up there, in total isolation, for centuries!



















It is very remote, and they only allow a certain number of boats full of tourists to dock there each day, so we had to reserve our spots in advance. When we got to Portmagee, we found a little dock with several smallish speed boats. The tide was very low at this point, so we had to climb down a long ladder to get in (and then clamber over into the next boat since ours wasn't the one closest to the dock), which felt fairly adventurous.

The boat ride out was about an hour long, but it was pleasant with lots of green Irish coastline to watch as we went by. Kevin and I were sitting facing the back of the boat, listening to an audiobook on the mp3 player (we each got one earbud). Unfortunately, this meant that we didn't see the whale which apparently jumped out of the ocean at one point while we were on the boat. We didn't notice the commotion until it was gone. A lady tapped me on the shoulder and said, "It's whales!" but at first I thought she meant, "It's Wales!" and I was really confused, because that would be a VERY far distance to have traveled in an hour!

Anyways, soon we could see the twin rocks jutting out of the sea. The bigger one was where we were headed--Skellig Michael. But the smaller one was quite impressive also (it's just called Little Skellig). It is a bird nesting site, and is totally COVERED in birds. In fact, it was quite a shock when I suddenly realized as we got closer that all that white stuff covering the peaks were millions of birds. Well, I guess not millions. Tens of thousands. But you get the point.


When we arrived at the island, we had to ascend about 750 feet to get to monastery site. The beginning part was paved switchbacks (paved recently for tourists of course), but after a little while, we started climbing up the steps that the monks had carved out of the rock. It was quite the workout, actually. We did stop to take some pictures of some neat birds, including several puffins. We tried to climb fast so that we would beat the other tourists to the top. Unfortunately, another group had docked before us, so we didn't beat *all* of them up there. But at least there weren't too many people around when we first arrived at the ruin site.


The monastery buildings were incredible--extremely well preserved. It was just amazing to consider what it must have been like living up there. The stone huts are made out of dry stone, which (I can't remember if I've explained before) means they are laid on top of each other without mortar. Surprisingly, this made them extremely resilient to shifts in the earth, etc. and helped preserved them fully intact. In contrast, there was a much newer stone structure which had once been a church up there as well, but it had been made with mortar, and it was in ruins.

We got to spend an hour or two poking around the ruins and eating some of the (many) cookies we still had from our dinner the day before (although we had to eat the food away from the ruins so as to not encourage the birds to land--and poop--on the ruins. The bird poop is serious business, as I was soon to find out.) We were glad to have had those, because we didn't have time to buy sandwiches before we got on the boat as was the original plan (note to self: always double driving time estimates when in Ireland).




Then, we hopped back on the boat and headed off again--but not before one of the puffins pooped RIGHT on my head. GROSS!! I was enjoying the ruins so much, though, that it didn't phase me too much.

Once we arrived back to Portmagee, we had a nice late lunch at a little pastry shop--they also served sandwiches and soups. I had some sort of cheesy crab soup thing. I forget what it was called, but it was awesome. And it came with AMAZING brown bread. Kevin had the chicken salad which he also really liked. Of course, I had to have a pastry for dessert too.


Then, we drove the rest away around the Ring of Kerry, stopping along the way a couple of times to take pictures of the scenery and to check out a drystone ring fort (also made without mortar, like the monks' "beehives"),











and then ending at Killarney National Park. We saw a few quick sights such as "Ladies' View" overlooking the lakes (a bit of a letdown, probably mostly because the sky was overcast), the Torc Waterfall (and a bit of the forest surrounding it--I swear everything in the forest was glowing green), and the outside of Ross castle on the lakes, where I snapped one of my favorite pics from our trip. We would have stopped to see the gardens at Muckross house, but there was a sign warning that they closed the gates at exactly 7 and then charged you like $100 to get out after the gates were closed. It was only 10 minutes before 7, so we didn't have time.

We then drove up to a mountain pass in the National Park called the Gap of Dunloe. During the day it is filled with hikers and carriages (they call them pony and traps), but by now it was almost empty of other people. We had planned to hike up the pass for an hour or two, but we were still tired from our Skellig adventure, and the road was actually pretty good, so we just drove it! (Don't worry--cars are allowed; it's just too busy during the day usually to be able to drive up there). It was really beautiful, especially since by this time the sky had cleared up some and the sun was going down, creating vibrant colors and long shadows.

After we drove back down out of the pass, we had to make our way back to Camp. Unfortunately, we had some navigational troubles (you would not believe how windy and unmarked those roads are! Even with a compass, I got us fairly lost). I was rather stressed out, I'm afraid.

Luckily, Kevin wasn't and we made it back just fine--even if it was 11pm by then! But, the sun was just going down, so all was well. We were beat! But we were back, having had an Irishly fantastic adventure.