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July 23 Sunday overcast showers Bicycle touring Northern Ireland The rain came down, down, down. Irish skies are not smiling. Last night we came to a heritage center where we could pan for gold in the stream! I would have settled for sunshine. After eating at a picnic table with a rustic warped plank roof -- which we discovered didn't keep out rain, we set our Kelty bicycle touring tent up on a triangle of grass at a back corner of the building. In the morning, the wind was gusting mightily, making the tent shake and flap like there was no tomorrow. Rain pelted down. After a couple of hours the pelting rain eased to a constant light drizzle. Oh, joy. A soft rain. Sharon says she sure is glad that we came for our bicycle tours of Ireland and Northern Ireland in the summer when the weather's nice. Gak! It has been constantly cold and damp since our arrival in Northern Ireland. We feel like we're missing summer. Patches of blue sky broke through intermittently in the afternoon. We dismantled our bicycle touring tent. Packing up our bike panniers, we pushed our loaded bicycles around the corner of the heritage centre just in time to greet the women arriving for work at 1:45 PM. The good news is the wind was at our backs. After climbing an initial hill on my wobbly overloaded Cannondale touring bike, I zoomed down a long ways. Could be a tad warmer, I thought. At one point, as we bicycled along in the Northern Ireland countryside, a tractor was parked on the edge of the road. We had just come down a hill and Sharon went flying by the tractor. With some amusement, I watched the old farmer jump off his tractor and sprint fifty feet down the road. I couldn't figure out what he was doing. Then, as I neared, I saw another tractor coming along an intersecting lane way. The lane and approaching tractor were completely hidden (and so was I) on the other side of a high hedge. The old guy was waving his arms for the other tractor to stop from coming out onto the roadway as I sailed by at 40 mph. Whew! Can you say pastrami on rye? The downhills are much smoother than in southern Ireland and we have been flying full tilt on our touring bicycles without worrying about jarring potholes. On another fast downhill section, sheep were grazing on the road. They were startled as we zoomed passed, unlike the sheep we met on the Ring of Kerry. The Ring of Kerry sheep just carried on business as usual with nary a glance at passing cyclists. The sheep we met in Northern Ireland though, went berserk, all running off -- fortunately away from us, rather than in front of us. Somehow, even with all that fluffy wool, I doubt impact with a sheep would be soft at 40 mph. Sheep thrills. We're bicycling past lots of purple foxglove along the road. For some reason, the people of Northern Ireland have gone all out to welcome us on our bicycle tour today. Maybe it's the weather? We have had plenty of waves, honks, thumbs-up, and headlights flashing at us. Almost everyone shakes their head as if to say, "I can't believe you have all that shit on your bike!" |
