Day 1: Dooley McFiat

We are operating under the pressing constraints of interent cafe minutes so this will be relatively brief. A short timeline of events,
7:10 PM EST, we take off
7:11 PM EST, Sarah falls asleep, everyone else curses her, orders from the drink cart, and reads about Ireland.
5:55 AM Ireland Time Zone (ITZ): Get first view of Irish countryside, Kara thinks we are crash landing in a field, Sarah awakens in time to marvel that the landscape fails to conform to the egalitarian Jeffersonian grid, characteristic of the American midwest. ahhhhh Professor Krieger would be proud! (No else has slept more than 40 minutes.)
6:45 AM ITZ: After initial rejection from every respectable car rental company at Shannon International, we encounter Dan Dooley car rental who gives us the keys to our gorgeous chariot (since renamed Dooley McFiat). We stuff all of our luggage in (barely) and set out on the open, windy, narrow roads of the spectacular Irish countryside.
2:00 PM ITZ: After napping in McFiat for two hours we visit the Cliffs of Moher and then continue our cicuitous drive up the coast to Galway.
6:00 PM ITZ: Check into "Snoozle's'"hostle and get ready for our first night out on the town!


"Seriously?" Moment of the Day: Julia mistakes a tourgroup of senior citzens for an angry mob of striking workers and urgently screams for us to lock the doors -- of our moving vehicle...

Irish Mantras/ Wisdom of the Celts (thus far):
1. "Never admit liability!" -- rental woman at Dooley on the first rule in case of an accident.
2. "Look right, stay left."
3. "Be the tortise!!" -- backstreat drivers as Julia careens around hairpin turns in the first 10 mins of driving stickshift with the wrong hand, on the wrong side of the road. Slow and steady wins the race... or gets there in one piece.

Cheers!
Julia, Sarah, Kara, Heidi and Courtney (as told by Julia and Sarah)