So I’m going to Ireland. Good for me.
I have decided to drive.
Not to Ireland. Although I prefer that to flying.
Don’t worry. I read Society of the Snow last year. I have my plan of action set, plane crash-wise.
But no. I’m not driving to Ireland. I’m driving in Ireland.
Rick Steves says the Irish attribute 10 percent of all car accidents to right-hand side of the road drivers like Americans. And I can remember, as a Dirty Dancing-obsessed adolescent, sifting through teeny bop rags for any news on the Northern Ireland Matthew Broderick-Jennifer Gray car accident.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Meaning, I’ve prepared.
By driving on the left-hand side of the road whenever I can.
Sheesh. No!
I interviewed three people who have driven in the United Kingdom or Ireland.
How difficult is it? What are the quirks? Any tips you’d like to share?
Next, I read blog posts — and Rick Steves, of course, my guru — by Americans who drove in Ireland. I even read blog posts by Americans who specifically traveled my route.
Next, I took an online course. With the platform’s 360-degree online experience, I was able to “drive” both city and country roads. I was careful to mark each lesson in the tutorial as “complete,” so I could get my completion certificate at the end.
Currently, I’m certified to scuba dive, coach Parkinson’s disease boxing classes, hunt, and drive in Ireland.
Just, you know, not all at the same time.
Certificate in hand, I hit Google Maps. I plotted my route.
Google Maps really is extraordinary. By clicking “Preview,” I was able to see what each leg of my journey looks like.
I worked my way through each route, then again through each route that avoided highways.
One route was 76 steps. I was working off my phone’s hotspot. There’s a universe somewhere in which I’m still at that picnic table, far from civilization, repeatedly clicking refresh, trying to see Google’s pictures.
Next, I discussed route options with my husband. I had him take the online course. I bought paper maps. My husband downloaded satellite maps.
I did something similar a few years ago in Scotland. We booked a tour of Inverness. For months, I exchanged emails with our tour guide. The sights we wanted to see. Nearby lunch stops. Did we have time to search for Nessie while sailing aboard the Loch Ness Deepscan Cruise?
Some sights we wanted to see were ticketed for specific times, others free. I again consulted my tour guide. What time would we reach the castle? The Loch Ness Monster museum?
On the day of our tour, I sat in the front seat with our guide — left side of the car, because he was on the right, driving. As we arrived at each experience, I tucked its corresponding paperwork into the back of my stack of papers, bringing our next experience to the fore.
“Yer verrah organized, are ya not, lass?” our guide observed.
My husband leaned forward in the car. “You have no idea,” he said.
The rigor of my Irish driving practice should not, then, come as a surprise.
Nor should my family’s request for a less meticulously planned vacation this year.
“We don’t get a chance to check out things we see on the way,” my son said.
Which is true.
But you don’t need to see them. I’ve researched every aspect of the trip. The plans I’ve made are the fun ones. The restaurants are the good ones. The towns are the ones with the most craic.
In case you’ve never read Darkfever, craic is pronounced “crack.”
It’s — it’s not the drug. It means fun. Good time.
And don’t let the fairies turn you off from reading Darkfever. They’re evil in the most terrible, gruesome ways.
Like Tinkerbell and Jason Voorhees had a baby.
That I have perhaps too aggressively planned driving — as I have our previous vacations — does not even register. I’m seriously considering the pre-exposure rabies vaccine my daughter received ahead of studying in Cuba because it’s apparently recommended for all travel outside of the United States.
Disturbing.
I’ve not only registered myself and my family for the State Department’s safe traveler program, but my in-laws as well, for their own trip later this summer.
An ounce of prevention.
A pound of cure.
If somebody gets Irish rabies, I’m certified — does that little certificate even mean anything? — to drive them to get their post-exposure vaccines.
Or to the helipad.
Good grief. I’m trying so hard to refrain from thinking of my kid’s Cuba trip right now.
“While I’m still young,” my son said today, “I’d like to spend a summer working in Europe. Just see where the days take me.”
Huh.
I’d better make him a plan.
