First day in Ireland

After a debacle at the airport over a ridiculously high price for shipping my bike, I said goodbye to my mom and flew to Newark airport. There I met Kyle Torres, a rider for Team Specialized, which I am guest riding for this trip. We walked around the airport and he had some lunch while I had some ice cream. The flight to Shannon, Ireland was mostly uneventful. I watched a Sherlock Holmes movie then slept for a few hours and woke up with about an hour left to fly. From the airport, we had about an hour's bus ride to Galway. Along the way we saw a lot of different scenery and Kyle was amazed by how lush the vegetation was. I was more amazed that everyone sounded like they were from a Harry Potter movie. After the bus ride we were greeted by our friendly driver, Danny, who loaded our bikes into a trailer and drove us to the Lough Lannagh Lodge, where we will be staying for the race. I lost the number pick for the front seat but won the coin toss for the bigger bet so I have a little more room to stretch out. After spending a few minutes relaxing we took the ten-minute walk into town and had some chicken curry for lunch. We relaxed for a few minutes back at the hotel than assembled our bikes to go on a ride. We had to keep reminding ourselves to stay on the left side of the road, which was more challenging than we'd imagined. We quickly got onto some nice back roads that passed by a lot of farms and enjoyed the dry weather. Kyle took some pictures so I will try to post those later. The countryside was very beautiful and all the people are gregarious and friendly. We took quick showers back at the lodge then went down to a local restaurant for dinner. I had pork chops with applesauce and veggies and Kyle had a steak sandwich. The waitresses were very nice a