We were headed for Kinsale. We were very close, only 20 or so miles away … we knew our way to Cork, and after that, all we knew was – we needed to head almost directly south. And there would be Kinsale.<\/p>\n
In our dreams.<\/p>\n
I was Driver at this point, and Allison was Navigator. It was dark now. It was about 6:00 pm … and I had promised Jimmy at the B&B in Kinsale that we would be there by 7, because he had to leave at 7. Cork, obviously, is a city, and I find that driving in the city is far more stressful than a long inter-county roadway, even with all the roundabouts. So we pretty much promptly got lost. We didn’t know where we were, or how to get where we were going, etc. I also had to pee. So I did a blasted RIGHT HAND TURN and we pulled into a gas station.<\/p>\n
Allison asked a young guy pumping gas for directions. (One thing: I found, in my experience over there, that the Irish are incapable of giving bad directions. We got absolutely awesome directions from no matter who we asked … but this particular time was parTICularly good …)<\/p>\n
So the young guy started telling Allison where she needed to go to get to Kinsale, and then almost immediately stopped himself. “My mother’s inside – we should wait for her to come out. She’s great at directions.”<\/p>\n
Boy, was she ever.<\/p>\n
Allison and I LOVED these people.<\/p>\n
This mother was so unbelievably generous with us, she gave us sterling directions … I mean, we didn’t realize how sterling they were until we were on the road again, and at every single point when we COULD have got confused, then there would come the landmark she had told us about, or whatever.<\/p>\n
“Wait – where are we?”
\n“Oh … there’s the river and the trees … she told us we’d see that when we came round the bend … this is the right way …”<\/p>\n
She drew us an awesome map. Her son hung around with us, too, validating his mother. “Yeah, that’s right … then you go through the Tunnel … right …” She was the FIRST person on our journey to tell us about the Americans crashing into the Minister of Parliament. Ha ha ha ha<\/p>\n
We stood by the gas pumps, as she drew her map, all of us chatting up a storm – how we found it driving on the other side of the road, where we had been, what our plans were … We also chatted quite a bit about what she called “the hairy roundabout” – She gave us profuse warnings about “the hairy roundabout”, which we needed to go through to get to Kinsale. It was south of Cork, and apparently a gazillion cars have crashed there, and she made it sound like shrieking hellatious chaos. We had to get ourselves into a certain lane, otherwise we would get stuck in the roundabout forever, etc ….<\/p>\n
And goldurnit, we followed her instructions to the letter<\/i>, and lo and behold, we were in Kinsale at 7:01. With poor Jimmy waiting for us at the door. Not too shabby!<\/p>\n
As we stood around the car, and she walked us through the directions, another car drove up. She glanced up and waved. Informed us, “That’s my husband.” Then another car pulled up to one of the other pumps, she waved to the driver of THAT car, and informed us, “If I weren’t married to my husband, I’d be married to him<\/i>.”<\/p>\n
And one by one, all of these various people – her husband, and the guy she’d be married to if she wasn’t married to her husband, joined our little coterie and looked at the map, and gave us suggestions … We were a small party by Gas Pump # 2.<\/p>\n
Our ring-leader woman would introduce us to every new arrival: “These 2 American girls are trying to get to Kinsale …”<\/p>\n
Every new arrival informed us of the “Americans crashing into the Minister of Parliament”. And every new arrival put the fear of God into us about “the hairy roundabout”.<\/p>\n
More suggestions came in, adding, clarifying, until we had the most specific set of directions<\/i> EVER GIVEN for a mere 20 mile drive. She even gave us emotional <\/i>directions for “the hairy roundabout”:<\/p>\n
“Just stay calm … stay calm … get yourselves in the right lane, and stay calm …”<\/p>\n
Allison and I drove off waving hail and farewell to all of our new-found friends. At the gas station in Cork.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We were headed for Kinsale. We were very close, only 20 or so miles away … we knew our way to Cork, and after that, all we knew was – we needed to head almost directly south. And there would … Continue reading