Daisy, Daisy, give me your color-coded plan, (complete with maps and twenty seven checklists) do.
Last month, my husband and I embarked on a bicycle trip around Ireland with my seventy-five year-old mother. Not only am I fortunate enough to have a husband willing to take his mother-in-law on vacation with us, I’m also lucky that I have a mother capable of being taken.
The trip itself boiled down to eleven days in Ireland, five of which were ultimately spent on actual bona fide cycling, four on biking to or from airports/train stations/bus stops, and two actually relaxing and enjoying a proper vacation. This short trip, however, took approximately three months to plan!
We’ve already established that I’m a planner-type. Well, guess which parent I got it from? I speak to my mother by phone every week, to see how she is and catch up on family news. For three months, the only topic of conversation was the trip. Shall we go to the south-east coast where it’s likely to rain less, but might not be as pretty, or the stunning Ring of Kerry where it’s windy, hilly and rains like the devil? How many pairs of shorts should we take? What kind of shoes for the evening? Will a U.S. tool kit fit a U.K. bike? Every week we made another decision about one thing and changed our minds about something else.
We decided to end the trip with a few days at my Mum’s to recuperate and catch up with the rest of my family and friends. After hours of discussing how to get back from Dublin to Sheffield—the train was too much of an unknown with bikes, the ferries too slow and expensive, my brothers too unable to commit--we decided to fly. I booked the tickets and everyone seemed satisfied, until we realized we had no idea how to get from the airport to my Mum’s with three people and three bikes, loaded with three weeks worth (even though it was only a two-week trip) of gear and souvenirs.
All the time my husband watched from the couch without comment, but with an amused grin on his face. For sport, he bought us each a full set of maps of the area we had finally decided to visit and planned to entertain himself by watching us haggle over routes and ultimately directions.
Alas, poor soul, I am my mother’s daughter and his plan resulted in two heads plotting our sweet revenge via the hilliest possible routes.
More antics from the Emerald Isle coming soon.
The trip itself boiled down to eleven days in Ireland, five of which were ultimately spent on actual bona fide cycling, four on biking to or from airports/train stations/bus stops, and two actually relaxing and enjoying a proper vacation. This short trip, however, took approximately three months to plan!
We’ve already established that I’m a planner-type. Well, guess which parent I got it from? I speak to my mother by phone every week, to see how she is and catch up on family news. For three months, the only topic of conversation was the trip. Shall we go to the south-east coast where it’s likely to rain less, but might not be as pretty, or the stunning Ring of Kerry where it’s windy, hilly and rains like the devil? How many pairs of shorts should we take? What kind of shoes for the evening? Will a U.S. tool kit fit a U.K. bike? Every week we made another decision about one thing and changed our minds about something else.
We decided to end the trip with a few days at my Mum’s to recuperate and catch up with the rest of my family and friends. After hours of discussing how to get back from Dublin to Sheffield—the train was too much of an unknown with bikes, the ferries too slow and expensive, my brothers too unable to commit--we decided to fly. I booked the tickets and everyone seemed satisfied, until we realized we had no idea how to get from the airport to my Mum’s with three people and three bikes, loaded with three weeks worth (even though it was only a two-week trip) of gear and souvenirs.
All the time my husband watched from the couch without comment, but with an amused grin on his face. For sport, he bought us each a full set of maps of the area we had finally decided to visit and planned to entertain himself by watching us haggle over routes and ultimately directions. Alas, poor soul, I am my mother’s daughter and his plan resulted in two heads plotting our sweet revenge via the hilliest possible routes.
More antics from the Emerald Isle coming soon.
posted by Lisa at 12:35 PM
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