Packing, a Birthday,
and back to driving on the right,
2005

Cute Dog Music

"It's tail-waggin' good!"

 


We did sleep in on Tuesday!  This was a day of rest, thankfully, or we'd have never made the next couple of days.  We slept until about 11AM!  I did some writing in the trip journal, we packed as much as we could, ate lunch, then took a nap.  I know this sounds like a lot too much sleep, but......

After I got up, I tuned, and played some.  It turned out the woman whose birthday it was was at the hostel.  Her birthday dinner was to be there.  So when she found out I was coming to the party at the pub later on, she was excited.  Dick called again, and told us he was dropping off Sabine and Lindsay at the hostel on his way to Coleraine to another gig, and would be back later.  So, Brandy and I went down to supper at a local Pub at the Fullerton Arms Hotel where we were joined by Sabine and Lindsay.

We stayed there until a little after 10PM when I went back to the hostel to get my dulcimer.  It was half 10 when I got back to the Fullerton Arms, and we all went on over to the Carrick-A-Rede Lounge and Bar (remember where the fiddler carving was?).

Alan Wade, Greg Gault, Sabine, Lindsay and the Brown sisters were there, and we started playing tunes.  About 11:45PM, Dick arrived and we played more.  We talked to a sister of the woman whose birthday it was, and found out they own the last operating Flax Mill in No. Ireland, whch was of interest to us since the Youngs had run a Linen Mill near Larne in the 16 & 1700s.

Things slowed down a bit after the woman's mother finished dancing to our music, and we sat around and talked.  At 1:45AM, I knew we wouldn't get any sleep to speak of, so I just said to myself, "OK, no sleep tonight", and went on.  At about 3:00AM or so we adjourned, and said our goodbyes to Dick, Sabine and all, and went to the hostel to finish packing.  We decided to sleep about an hour before getting up to load the car, eat and get to the airport for our 9AM flight.

At 4:30AM, we got up, did the above-mentioned packing, eating and loading and headed off to the airport.  Before we got to Ballycastle, however, we encountered that traditional Irish traffic jam - sheep in the road!  Thankfully, we missed them all, and them us, and we got on our way fairly quickly.

We filled up with Petrol (you think it's expensive here?!), then got to the airport, unloaded the car, turned the car in, and started checking in through security and the airlines.  We made it to the gate about 45 minutes before the plane left, so we were fine.  And we both slept on the flights between both Belfast & Newark and Newark & Raleigh.  We and out luggage got to RDU intact and at the same time, and our friend Judy was at the airport to pick us up.

That ends the actual trip for this year, though processing all that happened, doing these web pages, viewing video footage, and planning for next year have all begun - and will go on for a good while to come.

Next year in Bushmills!

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