West Cork Rally

In Ireland they use the little paved butter roads for something more useful than tractor movements - road rallys. These aren't the tame little rallies that obey the speed limit and stuff like in the US. No way! These are screaming little mini-cars with way too much horsepower and no fetters on velocity or sound control.

Apparently Ireland is the only place they rally like this on paved roads. Similar contests are held in Europe, Africa and the like, but it's almost all dirt roads.

The courses are laid out on the back roads in the country around here, with signs put up warning people the roads will be closed several weeks ahead. Then on the day of the event, crews block off the road, and the start of a stage is hearlded by a pace car running the course at (somewhat) reduced speed to make sure all the tractors and cows are off the road. Then they let'er rip.

Thousands off people turn out to watch, standing on the hedgerow fences and tromping across pastures to get to the choice corners. The media is there too with helicopters and big cameras. It's quite the deal.

Cork for St Patrick's weekend

It was brilliant. Marvelous parade in the swirling driving sleet and rain. Everybody from the Chernobyl children's project to the Royal somebody pipers band was there.

Finally got to St Finbar's church (He was a Catholic, no? The current church is Anglican!) Cork Butter museum is quaint, but not really worth it unless you want to learn some advanced business tactics. The elevation of Ireland's dairy industry to world class was a remarkable achievement on the part of the Cork butter trade association.

The Old Oak is probably the coolest pub in Cork. Live music downstairs, everbody dancing, Cailghee dancing upstairs. They wouldn't let the kids in near 21:00, and by 22:00 the line to get upstairs was down the block and around the corner.

Lost puppy!

Has anybody seen this puppy? His name is Steve, and Josie misses him very much. So does his best friend Bubby. He seems to have fallen off the bus somewhere in Ireland. So he could be in Cork, or Baltimore or Church Cross. Or he could have wandered off to some far off land with better dog food or catching a get-a-away bus out of Portland. Anyway, if you see him, let us know and we'll make arrangements for his return.

The Old House

By special request from a previous resident, 'ere are a couple more pictures of the "Old House". For some reason the pictures may not be showing up here, but if you click on the little square boxes you will see them.

We're in "The Old House" in Knockbrown, near Bandon, Co Cork for a time (till end of May), catching our breath and enjoying living in a house for a change. The house is on the road to Timoleague, about 3 miles from the bay, 6 from Bandon. It looks over a large ravine with pasture and riparian area, and the ocean off in the distance. There are 5 bedrooms, with room for 9-10. Y'all come visit, OK?

We're currently enjoying winter weather in Bandon Ireland. It's on the south coast, but still 51deg N. (51d 41m 5s N, 8d 45m 50s W to be precise.) It snowed a little yesterday but didn't stick.

It's amazing the antiquity of things here. We had beer in a pub down the street that was there (and under the same name) before the 13 states told the Brits to feck off (that's Irish spelling).

Trying to get the local school board to let our kids go to school

here. Connor is dying to play some footie (soccer) with the locals, and Josie just likes to have friends. They could use a little schooling too, as we've been a little lax in that department. They sound funny with Irish accents, which they get about 10 minutes after talking with Irish kids.

Buying a car in Eire

Since we're staying in Ireland for several months in a rural
setting it seemed most sensible to buy a car rather than renting or
relying on public transit. There's two buses a day past the
Knockbrown house. Plus, it would cost E15 to get all 4 of us
to town and back.

Hmm. My keyboard doesn't have a euro character. How
crass of them to go off inventing a new character to represent their
money. Hasn't the EU heard of ASCII? I'll use 'E'
to represent the € until a better solution occurs to me.

A copy of the local Buy and Sell yielded quite a number of suitable
cars for reasonable (<E4000) prices. After weeding out
the ones that were already sold or too far away etc, I settled on a '93
MB 200TE owned by a very nice goldsmith from Midleton. He was
very helpful and patient while I struggled with the legal aspects of
vehicle ownership. That was the easy part. Be sure
to check out Muckley's Jewelery in Midleton next time you're
there. Very nice family business.

Most of the insurance companies will not insure anybody who doesn't
hold at least an Irish learners permit. Supposedly, under
permit you can only drive cars of less than 1.6L displacement with a
large red 'L' in the window, must have a fully licensed person
accompany you, and the insurance companies charge you a small
fortune. It takes weeks to get a date to take the test, and
weeks more to receive the permit. Oh, and you need a PSN
before you can take the test.

Now the PSN is like the US Social Security number, you get it to
identify yourself as a working member of the country, and collect
social security moneys from working. Needless to say, the
bureau of social services is reluctant to give a PSN to a person
holding a "No Working Here" visa.

To get a reasonable insurance rate, you need to hold a full license (2
months to get a drivers test appointment), and have something called a
"Zero Claims Bonus". You get this bonus certificate from your
previous insurance company by dropping your policy with them.

Into this morass of bureaucracy and corporate greed I stepped, having
kissed the Blarney stone for some much needed silver-tongued persuasion.

After working through several completely useless brokers (McCarthy's
and another I forget), and several companies, both in person on Cork's
South Mall, and by phone to those bloody anonymous call centers located
who knows where, I finally found my way round to Hibernian, where if I
could show a zero claims bonus, would insure me on my US license as if
I held a full Irish license, ie. with a somewhat less usurious
rate. Since US insurance co's don't provide a ZCB,
we engaged in a bit of subterfuge to provide a letter from my agent
indicating that I was worthy of same. This also involved
dropping Francie from the policy, as she was not, for several reasons,
worthy.

At long last, 3 weeks, 10 US phone calls (Yeah Skype!), a couple dozen
local calls, half a dozen faxes, another visit to the car to get vital
numbers and certificates, and E800, I had a receipt for insurance and
could take possession of my sweet (not so) little Mercedes.