Ride on, Highway Cat !!: WEST IRELAND RAMBLE 2019

DAY 1, Tue. Sept. 3, 2019

Plan: North Van. ➔ YVR ➔ Dublin Airport ➔ Leeson Inn (Dublin Ireland)
Stats: My good buddy Kerry drove me to YVR. 45 min. Check in/waiting 2.5 hours, Flight 8;40 hours, Security/bike build/bags 3 hours. Bike to Leeson Inn- should have been 45 min. Got lost and lost and lost.= 2 F**king hours ( I can smile now, but was almost crying then! )
Total Time: 14:25 hours (est.)

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Time was ticking away and I was stressing out as my flight departure neared. My friend Kerry came by to help out and drive me to the airport. This was huge as he already had plans. Thanks again man!
Once at the airport, Kerry helped me get my bearings (my brain was in sleep mode)
Moving through the airport, we happened upon another guy on a bike mission. Turned out that he was heading to Ireland also. Anyway, I progressed to my check in line up. There were issues with my bike and payment, which was not a surprise. The Air Canada clerk was less than cheery.
Getting settled into my isle seat, I learned that my neighbour was an elderly woman. Turned out that she needed help with things during the flight. I helped her with the TV screen a bit and opening some snack packaging.
The flight was fast. 8:40 hrs. When we entered the airport, we were greeted with a labyrinth of directional rope and zig zagging lines to nowhere. This shit show took forever. When I got to the customs officer, I unfortunately had a hard time finding paperwork that he wanted to see. I had a mini panic scenario but got through and found myself a relatively quiet corner of the airport. I happened upon the other bike guy from Vancouver. He was pretty stressed out while getting his bike assembled.
Well, I had lots of time, so I slowly put Shirley together and headed out fairly relaxed but but a bit freaked out. The ride to my home base seemed straight forward and not far at around 10 km I think. It turns out that I have no sense of direction at all. Even though I had a detailed route written down, I had no idea where the guest house was. I knew that I was within a couple km's but couldn't find the street. I had issues with my phone, so Google wasn't part of the team. Like an idiot, I asked many people where I could find the street. Of coarse 96 % of the hordes of people were tourists and they had no clue. One guy stopped and looked very annoyed as he pulled out his phone. He pointed east and said "That way, turn right" Turns out I was walking around it for probably 45 minutes.
The Leeson Inn was a perfect home base. I got settled in with food and beers. Today was an extremely difficult day. I learned quickly that I am a terrible tourist outside of North America. I could finally relax and de-stress even though Highwaycat wanted to get rolling. Evil Cat!

The bike portion...

Bloody simple route and downhill too. Screwed it up anyway. Sheesh. HWC's fault! Ha ha