Lord of the Dance
In 48 hours I will be arriving in Shannon, Ireland, gathering up a gaggle of family and friends (19 to be exact) and we will drive in two rented 9-passenger vans and one 4-passenger car the three hours to Westcove, where we have a peaceful and large (operative word is large…as in sleeps 26) manor house and grounds on the Ring of Kerry, right on a lovely cove that looks out to the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Skellig Isles. The count will include (besides Kim and me), three kids, two in-law kids, one significant other kid, two grandkids, one sister (another one with her hubby are driving in separately from Cork), a nephew, his daughter and significant other, one cousin, his wife and two kids and one random, but close, friend. The following Saturday we change out the linen and drop off that crew and pick up another crew of 16 new in-laws and friends. This is almost like a John Candy or Chevy Chase summer movie extravaganza.
Something(s) will go wrong for sure, but no worries. We will adjust as we always do. Someone will get snippy with people they don’t see often and someone will get annoyed with people that they see all too often. We will have laughs and maybe even a few good cries. Hopefully no one will twist and ankle or knee or step on a rusty nail, but we know how to deal with that as well. We have tours planned and excursions mapped out. Breakfast stuff is stocked in the larder, dinners are planned for home and away and lunches are free-form. Some will be joiners and some will be stay-at-home and relax or sulk or whatever sorts.
To get in the proper form, we have spreadsheeted everyone’s arrival, departure and lodging in the manor, the cottage or the stables. Some of that will change with audible adjustments to be expected. Someone will be thrilled with their room and someone will be grumpy and under-appreciated due to their room. Every pebble on the beach has been considered by Kim and me and yet we have enough experience to know that every pebble wants to be its own decider on where on the beach it will lodge itself. I have called a few sub-organizers to be sure the meet-up happens as it is supposed to at the airport because one thing for sure is that if you don’t start out right, everything else after that will go awry. I think we are all good…more or less.
I have gotten automatic transmission vans with air conditioning even though both could be unnecessary in Ireland. The governing factor was the left-hand drive thing and the desire to allow myself and the other drivers to minimize the complications of getting used to driving new cars in a new land on a new side of the road with eight other people checking their GPS’s to tell us where we should have turned. By the way, we will have two car seats for the kids, so someone is bound to throw up along the way as well, and we know the chain reaction that is likely to cause on a three-hour ride from the airport through the Irish countryside.
This year I have done something new that I should have been doing for several years. I have driven the route from Shannon to Westcove the entire way. I have all the turns figured out and I know what the visual cues are so that I can say “this doesn’t look right” should I miss a turn. How did I do that? I simply went on Google Maps and drilled down in satellite mode and did it. I know the 2-dimensional overhead view and where there are towns and villages and where there are country roads. I have gone down to Google street-level and literally driven the entire length from airport to manor house so I pretty much know what it all looks like, at least as recently as the latest Google street-level data allows, which looks pretty darn recent.
I’m not sure why I’ve never done this before for one of these monster family vacation extravaganzas (last year to San Simeon and the year before to Normandy), but I haven’t. I’m feeling very smart this morning and pleased with myself since I feel like I am part of the Irish cognoscenti even though I’ve never spent much time in Ireland (Scotland recently much more and they do look alike, but still not the same and not driving myself for many years on the “wrong” side of the road). I feel so much more at ease with what I will encounter. I remember a family Christmas trip to Costa Rica that involved a three-hour nighttime drive from San Jose to the coast at Manuel Antonio that seemed OK conceptually and in the light of day looked more harrowing than we could believe or remember (complete with crocodiles in the river off a certain bridge). I could have used Google Maps street-view then for sure.
I have been looking forward to this vacation for many reasons. I like gathering my family and friends for some R&R. I like seeing new places. I like being “on vacation” (who doesn’t?). And I like the prospect of lounging around a nice homestead either sitting in a pool (decidedly not an Irish activity), reading a book on a lawn chair or hammock, or wandering to the bakery right next door for a croissant before others have arisen. By the way, there is nothing else near this manor house for several miles, but there is a bakery 100 feet away. Tell me that’s not damn good luck?
We are being warned of a road closure between Killarney and Sneem (great Irish name). We have work-arounds, but I will say that I don’t think I am going to be able to avoid going to Sneem just to have a look around at a place with such a great name. The rest of the route is a hodgepodge of sountry and village roads with stone walls, coastal moraine and views of the sea. It looks fantastic. I guess after all, The Ring of Kerry gets a special designation as a place to go drive around (like 17-Mile Drive in Monterey) because it’s a nice drive with lots of scenic overlooks.
So, I am all set for my trip. I have my visualizations all set. It doesn’t look like we can go too wrong with the roads (always a bad assumption) and we are in a country where we speak the language for a change (probably also a bad assumption from the dialectically-challenging emails I have seen with “ye turn left at th’vicarage” and other great Gaelicisms). I will be the guy driving the van over the center line trying to keep the van and car in my rearview mirror (objects are always closer than they appear) and swearing that I’ve been there before. So, say a wee prayer for the Irish because here comes the Griswolds, led by the Lord of the Dance hisself.