Day 30

November 2, 2021:

I woke up around 8:30 am, and considered going downstairs for breakfast. Mama was very critical of my nap last night, stating that the best way to get through jet lag is to stay up until the proper time in the new place and get to sleep then, rather than resorting to a nap earlier. Doing so keeps you on the wrong timezone, just making your body confused. And while that’s definitely correct, I find that my body far prefers adapting to the new timezone over the course of two days. The first day is spent recovering on lost sleep – like not having gotten a full night’s sleep on the plane. The second day is for doing Mama’s strategy to stay up ‘later’ to reset your body’s internal clock. Mama will always complain about me doing this; she just doesn’t understand. It can be very frustrating. Thankfully, I didn’t have her standing there nagging me, so I went back to bed, sleeping well past breakfast to 11:00 am.

When I finally did get up, I brushed my teeth, got dressed, and headed down to reception. I didn’t shower because I didn’t feel like paying the extra two euro for a towel. In hindsight, this was a mistake. Breakfast ends at 9:30 am, so I’ll aim to be up before then tomorrow. I mentioned my plans for the day to Stephanie, who recommended Bryan’s tailor shop on Talbot St. who could repair my damaged clothing. I brought my worn-through sock and ripped rain pants. The guy there wouldn’t fix the sock, stating simply “I don’t do that.” Further, he wouldn’t use a patch to add material to the rain pants, rather saying he’d just resow that ripped seam. This would inherently make the pants tighter in that area, but I just went with it, recalling that the pants never got close to ripping while I was cycling, instead only happening when I assumed a weird position to re-inflate a tire. He charged eight euro for the rain pant repair. Given that the pants cost something like $130 at REI, I figure that’s worth it.

After visiting the tailor, I crossed the river to explore downtown Dublin. This is definitely the more touristy side of the river. I entered a small tourist gift store. You know the type – the ones that sell trinkets, fridge stamps, and themed clothing. I looked through their selection of post cards. Some had pastures with sheep and cattle. Others showed waves crashing against rocks at sunset. One had a rocky cliffside road with a speed limit sign of 100 kph. I didn’t pick that one specifically because I didn’t want to stoke Mama’s fears that the roads in Ireland are terrifyingly narrow and wild. I like maps, so I picked out one that showed all of Ireland, highlighting the Wild Atlantic Way, a 2500 km (1600 mile) trail that follows the west coast of Ireland. Looking at the card, a lot of the major sites to visit were in the southwest, and I considered extending my trip south from Galway to also include Limerick.

I went to a Patagonia retail store to buy a fleece. Patagonia often sells these plasticky-things. While I’m sure they’re effective, I wanted a cuddly mid-layer, and after a short conversation with a store employee, found exactly what I was looking for. It cost 130 Euro. Expensive, but it will prove worth every penny, I’m sure. I used my debit card for the transaction. Just tapping it worked, surprisingly. I always seem to be inserting my card in the US, so this is like a revelation.

Mama said I should check with my bank to make sure they weren’t charging exorbitant exchange fees. She told of a horror story where they once charged her a flat rate of $35 per transaction in addition to other exchange fees. That would be a disaster. I checked, and all I could find was a 3% fee in addition to whatever the current exchange rate is. That’s… a bit. I’m sure they screw me on the exchange rate taking the sell rate rather than the buy rate. I kind of view that as a tax of 3%+. But honestly… and I know this may be a controversial opinion: that’s not that bad. I can accept that. It’s basically a courtesy fee that prevents me from running out of cash. And running out of cash and having to resort to an ATM really would be bad.

I found a hip new-age restaurant called Sprouts. They serve healthy, mostly vegan, salad-based fare. I got a bowl called ‘Chick-Please.’ That’s a clever name. It was delicious.

From Sprouts, I walked to a post office to send the post cards. I borrowed a pen from the register of the convenience store the post office was embedded into and wrote messages to both Mama and Dada. The stamps were really cool: one featured a picture of electronics, the other a biplane flying low across the ocean. The stamps cost me 2 euro each.

After sending the cards, I went back to the north side of the river to pick my bicycle up from the shop. It was almost entirely assembled, but it looked like they were still working on the front rack. The guys couldn’t figure out quite how it went, so I showed them. They then put the front tire on and put it on the ground. I put my bag on it and made sure I had all the other things that were packed in the bike box, such as my helmet and cable lock. The guy who had worked my bike, Pavel, said it had been a bit of a DIY job, but that it should all be ready. That made me feel uneasy. If I wanted a DIY job, I’d have done it myself. The reason I didn’t is because in my previous move to Wisconsin, I really screwed up my bike doing so, having messed up the way one of the pedals was installed. But hey, it was cheap, and I paid just 35 euros for the full reassembly and tune-up. He also said that my cable lock wouldn’t be enough for Dublin, making a clipping motion with his hands. But when he learned I also had a U-lock, he nodded. “That should work.”

I left the store, cautiously walking it through the pedestrian areas of Talbot St to avoid hitting people. When I got back to the section of the street that cars can traverse, I peddled slowly, still doing what I could not to get in anyone’s way. The right pedal felt a little.. off kilter. There was a quirk in the way it moved that was unfamiliar. I looked at it a bit more closely, and saw that it had been installed at an angle into the crank. I’d definitely have to take it back in to the shop and give them a hard time about this. But I needed to use the restroom, and figured I’d go to hostel first.

I made it about a mile, not even back to the hostel, when the right pedal fell off. It flew into the street, and I got off the bike. I waited as cars passed for a safe opportunity to run out and grab it. The threads on the pedal were full of metal from the crank, and the crank itself looked absolutely threaded.

I walked the bike the rest of the way to the hostel, pushing it up several flights of stairs to my room. It didn’t fit in the elevator. I used the bathroom and took a quick rest. It’d have been easy to lie down like that for a while. But I knew I needed to get back to the shop so they’d believe it had really just happened.

I used the bicycle like a scooter, with my hands on the handlebars like normal, but with my right foot on the left pedal, propelling myself forward with my left foot. That puts a lot of pressure on my right knee, so I braced it with my other leg sometimes. This method allows me to achieve a speed substantially faster than walking, but still allows me to instantly dismount and slow down while going through pedestrian areas.

Reaching the bike shop quickly, I wheeled my damaged bike in through the front door. The other Polish guy (not Pavel) was the one manning the register and was clearly worried that I was back so soon. I showed them the issue with the crank and the pedal. The guy brushed the metal shavings out of the threads of the pedal and torqued it to hell into the crank. “That ain’t going anywhere now.”  he said, despite my skeptical look. It looked good, so I figured I’d give it a chance.

There was about an hour of daylight left, so I cycled well past the hostel in the direction of the waterfront. It felt weird riding my bike on the opposite side of the road, even if I was in a protected bicycle lane. I soon got used to the inverted street design. So far, my experience has been that fears of dangerous Irish roads appear to be entirely false – at least in Dublin.

I went north, following the bay past Dublin Port. The bike path eventually just became a path through a seaside park. I found my first Irish geocache outside of a church there. At dusk, I cycled back to the hostel. I asked the front desk if I could take my bike upstairs – unsure if what I had done before was proper. The guy was hesitant, saying I could if I could take it out of the way. I mentioned that Stephanie had said there was a bike rack in the luggage room. The desk guy wasn’t sure, and went to check. Sure enough, that was the solution. The luggage room is behind a locked door, and only residents of the hostel have access. I used my U-lock to secure the bike to the rack, carrying my valuables upstairs. The bike panniers were still in the box I had in the safe in my room.

I settled in, bringing my computer downstairs to call my German friend Tobias via Discord. It was hard to hear him at first because another group was very loud. I ordered a pint of Red Ale – and used the half-pint voucher the hostel had given me as well. I actually ended up ordering a total of 4.5 pints over the course of the evening. The loud group eventually left. There were also some internet problems, so we didn’t use our cameras to save bandwidth. I discussed my plans, and we talked about doing the Santiago de El Camino hike in Spain. It’s something I expressed interest in doing several years ago when Tobias brought it up during the study abroad trip. Now would be THE chance.

Slightly drunk, I hung up eventually. I went up to bed intending to work on my blog. Instead, I resdiscovered The King’s Avatar, found a suitable spot (not sure quite where I left off), and got to reading. It’s a web novel my roommate Mark recommended to me in my sophomore year of college. It was an enjoyable evening, but I didn’t get anything done.