Tuesday, October 3, 2017
This fourth blog entry about my September, 2017 trip to Ireland is about travel to, from, and on that island off the British coast. British Columbia, the Canadian province where I live, passed a law in 1922 ordering everyone to drive on the right side of the road. I think this province was among the last North American places to so decree. A couple decades ago, a playful political party called the Rhinoceros Party mused in public about strengthening Canada's British link by moving vehicles back to the left side of the road. Rather than shock everyone with an abrupt change, the party suggested only buses and trucks drive on the left side of the road for the first year.
Back in Britain and Ireland, people continue to drive on the left side of the road. Europeans drive on the right side of the road. This forces traffic to switch sides upon entering, or exiting, I don't know which, the tunnel that links Britain to the rest of Europe. Britain's recent vote to leave the European Union might complicate driving as it complicates farming, trade, education, and many other areas. A British Rhinoceros Party might suggest a gradual exit: potatoes, cheese, and philosophy professors during the first year, carrots, crackers, and physics professors the second year, and so on. Have the Mo;nty Python crew, good Brits all, singing "The Philosopher Song, which Europe and the world hope to retain:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPFClJGqjBQ
Most of Ireland severed the British link in 1922, the year British Columbia stopped British driving, but all Ireland continued to drive on the left side of the road during my visit. Should I feel outraged as a tourist whose habits they ignored? Given that I have a hard enough time driving on the right side of some Canadian roads, especially in winter, I think the Irish should be grateful that I neither complained about driving nor drove while in Ireland. I left that to my vehicularly-ambidextrous sister.
Clutch under her left foot and therefore closer to the clutch plate in the transmission, Maryanne smoothly shifted all five forward and one reverse gear as she drove a rented car 851 kilometres in one week. After she drove a couple thousand in two weeks during a 2016 visit from our brother Harold, wowed by her driving, and perhaps as happy as I was not to be behind the wheel, I thought the Irish car rental agencies might combine to blacklist her from future rentals; but they again rented her a car.
"Hey, that Canadian-Irish dual citizen is renting a car here," the 2017 agency might have said to a central registry. The registry could then take bets on how far she would drive this time; the Irish love betting. The winner could get a week's holiday in Canada, and see people drive on the wrong side of the road. What side of the road is correct is relative, and I'm glad a relative found the relatively-correct side of the road during our travels. See on this Irish road trip instructional video a road sign for Slane. We wuz there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbvWT1PXrSM
Soon after my plane from Toronto landed at the Dublin airport, I found a bus for Belfast. It was a double-decker with about seven people on it and I sat on the top deck, behind the people who took the front seats, over the driver. The bus rolled into the breaking day and reached Belfast in a couple hours. Unlike other buses, this one had no stairs down to a bathroom midway along the bus on the right side, at least not on the top deck. Irish people older than 65 ride buses for free. Is Weird Al Yankovic over 65? Could the Irish adopt him? Sing along to "Another One Rides the Bus:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SFEgu3KsGk
The bus stopped at Great Victoria Station in Belfast, where I boarded a train for Coleraine, a couple hours west along the north coast. The train made a couple stops within Belfast and a few more outside it, on its way to Derry. I got off at Coleraine, where Maryanne met me after she rode a few kilometres on a train from Portrush. We rode a train back to Portrush and after a brief walk around town, I stayed awake until 8:30 PM and slept off most of my jet lag that night.
I'm still amazed that I flew through eight time zone changes in one day. The planes fly about 800 kilometres per hour, higher than 10 000 metres. The Aer Lingus middle row was four seats wide and each side row was two seats wide. When I saw the mass of baggage cascading down the carousel, I was even more amazed that all that weight of people and bags got into the air.
A New Zealand man we met on the ferry across the Foyle River from
County Derry to County Donegal foresaw a long trip back, by air:
Dublin to London to Dubai to Auckland. That's 12 time zones, he told me, halfway around the Earth.
Have "Learning to Fly," by Tom Petty, who died on October 3, 2017 of heart failure at age 66:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbvWT1PXrSM
Trains were my favorite form of transportation to, in, and from Ireland: smooth, quiet, not crowded. People can get up and walk around. During our Derry-Belfast train ride, we sat in facing double seats with a table between us. What a nice way to travel, and picnic. The Derry train station retains serious ironwork fortifications from the 30 years of British Army occupation of Northern Ireland, where Derry is, due to a jag in the border which follows the Foyle River then turns south around the city to swallow it before resuming its run along the river.
Perhaps I liked trains because the tracks are as wide and far apart as Canadian tracks. For the Irish roads are narrower than Canadian roadds. Big trucks, buses, and our little red rented Ford Fiesta pass one another by mere centimetres. Maryanne was an excellent, organized, reassuring driver and I was not a nervous passenger. This helped make a happier holiday.
Back in Canada now, I end this fourth blog entry about my 2017 trip to Ireland thinking of "Traveling Man," which I remember from Tommy Hunter's 1970s musical variety show on Canadian television:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtXvznfMWAw
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