Day 7 and 8

The cathedral in Ballina - I didn't get to see it till later

Ballina's River of Moy is known as possibly the best salmon fishing in the world

10:00 AM OHHH! What a headache

11:00 AM OHHH! What a headache

12:00 PM OHHH! What a headache

Hopefully today will be my least fun day in the Emerald Isle. I am paying for the great fun of the previous evening. After breakfast I lay about and watch some Gaelic football and hurling. Both extremely fun games. I'll explain those games in a future blog.
I even slept through mass, which for those that know me is extremely rare. Oops. It’s a very nice cathedral so I would have liked making that for the aethstetic as well as the spiritual.

3:00 PM Spent an hour driving around the pretty country with TK. His hospitality was incredible. Wouldn’t let me pay for anything and had breakfast and lunch served before I even got to the kitchen.

8:00 PM Stomach STILL a bit queezy but made it through some more Chinese. They love it here.

NEXT DAY
6:30 AM Getting up early to make a 7:15 bus or "coach" ride down to Galway. From asking around, Haggerty is a Galway name, so maybe I’ll bump into some kin folk.

9:20 AM Joe, who is running the camp, picks me up at the coach station. He is hilarious. He talks at 100 mph, I mean 150 km/hr. Great guy and excellent tour guide. Tells me they had the plans to build Trinity College in Dublin, Queens College in N. Ireland and whatever school is in Galway. After building it, they realized they accidentally built the N. Ireland Queens College in Galway.

10:00 AM Realizing that Irish kids aren’t any better than American kids. It’s more a socio-economic thing. This camp is for disadvantaged kids and is very cheap. The kids don’t listen well at all and some of them are just plain turds. But there are enough good ones to still make it a fun camp. Plus, they are very young. One session is 7-10 year olds with a few 5 and 6 year olds scattered in. That is just baby sitting using a basketball instead of Barney movies.

1:00 PM At the second session for 11-13 year olds I meet Mini-me. He looks just like I looked at 12- freckles, red hair, blue eyes and usually smiling. Except his smile doesn’t consist of a gap you can fit a nickel through (true, I tried it) and lacks the aviator spectacles I rocked back in 1993. Ironically enough his name is Sean Kelly. With a brother named Patrick. So weird. He even acts like me – you know suave, debanaur, all the female campers love him and the male campers want to be him. But seriously he does kind of have my goofy demeanor.

4:00 PM Quitting time and we head home. My new roomie, Dave from New Foundland, Canada says he’s gotta stop off somewhere and will be home in a few. I come to realize he “goes dark” frequently and it is to… Meet up with hot babes?…nope, just smoke dubies. Thankfully I give off the no dubies vibe, so I don’t have to turn down offers to toke it up. Anyway, while he is rollin a fattie, I knock out for an incredible one hour nap.

6:00 PM Chicken philly at a local café is excellent and of course the fries, I’m sorry “chips,” are excellent. Right as we are about to get a pint we get a call to go shoot hoops at the local college. This leads to us breaking into the college and hoping the “caretaker” does not come around.

9:00 PM Harassed by a girl with bright pink hair trying to get us to save the Africans, who die not most often from AIDS or warfare or sheer boredom in the desert, but dehydration. Apparantly my 12 Euros a month can make a well for an entire village. Not buying it. Me and Dave (the canuck) both agree we like to give our money locally. I agree with the great comedian Sam Kinneson, “Why are there all these infomercials for these African people starving. I want to go over there and say, ‘What is this? It’s fecking sand, you know what it will be in a thousand years. Still fecking sand. MOVE TO WHERE THE FOOD IS!”

10:00 PM Late night bball workout. My roomie is trying to remain a pro, so we work on our aging skills.

9:30 PM Big pint of Guiness and even better pint of water. The bartender himself rights their Guiness at an 8. I appreciate his honesty. I’d say he is spot on.

11:00 PM Every attractive girl in Galway is out trying to offer us free cover to various clubs. You know me and free so I’m thinking let’s go to the flat and change and take advantage, but big 6’8 Dave is having nothing of it. So we have to let all these pretty ladies down easy.