DAY TWENTY-FOUR: LIFEHACK, DOOLIN TO DINGLE

Today I open with a very important life hack.  It begins here:

If your wish is to see the Cliffs of Moher and you can't get enough of them because, lets be honest, who could ever get sick of the Cliffs of Moher, they'd have to be insane, and you decide that seeing them from on top isn't enough; you're not satisfied even after 16 miles of hiking (and one near-death experience).  You want another hit.  

Simple solution; go ahead and book yourself a one-hour boat cruise to see them from their base.  That way you can leave Doolin feeling that you've left no shale surface unturned in your efforts to completely appreciate this amazing UNESCO site.

And if you do book this cruise, please keep in mind that there are several ways to enjoy the cliffs from the water.  You can book a small charter for yourself and a few select friends.  You can take a red boat, which holds maybe 50, for a more democratic experience.  

That you will find either of these options satisfying I can only guess, because we booked the blue boat.  Don't book the blue boat. No matter how inexpensive it is, no matter how many times Fat Jason Statham shakes your hand and pretends to kiss you on the cheek while checking you in (he will turn on you later), avoid the blue boat.  The blue boat is chaos.  The blue boat is corruption.  The blue boat is disappointment.

The blue boat is not run as a meritocracy that rewards visitors who show up first and then patiently wait in line, at first when nobody is sure where the line actually is and then afterward when the red boat guy who earlier claimed ignorance about anything having to do with the blue boat walks down the pier saying, "red boat on the left, blue boat on the right.)

The blue boat is vicious and confusing, an enigmatic dog-eat-dog battle where the greatest currency is an upraised left arm clutching a tour group brochure, because this innocent-looking brochure, as far as I can tell, is possessed with the twin powers of hypnosis and cloaking.  It allows the user -- and however many people have spewed forth from the enormous tour bus in which he arrived --  to knife through the crowd, nose in the air, taking his place at the front.  However often "the front" moves, the holder of the light saber-like tour brochure will find it, followed by a wake of elderly (in this case) German tourists whose fealty to the brochure is total.  And they move as a group with a confidence only possible when you know you're protected by the brochure.

And then, the boat finally arrives and F. Jason S. demonstrates that while horseplay and good-natured back-and-forth are his trading capitol, crowd control is not.  Whether disinterested, unskilled or perhaps a combination of the two plus a few Euros delivered under the table, his solution for wrangling what this morning was quickly becoming an unruly mob was to tell everyone "Don't move!  I will come get you!" and then stand still as the crowd surged forward like 1970s Cincinnati teenagers eager to see The Who.

He was clearly under the hypnotic spell of the brochure, as the one thing he did know was that the George Plimpton-like tour group leader was getting on that boat first, and so was every single one of his acolytes.  The rest of us could stand there and shake our fists, surge in whatever direction we wanted, position our bodies between Plimpton and a few of his elderly charge, hoping to half at least some of the carnage.  We were powerless.  Worse than powerless.  Powerless and frowned on by our "totally over it" and polite wives.

We're getting close to the life hack.

If you find yourself here, actually knocked to the side by an elderly but determined German tourist acting with the full backing of the brochure, and you decide, okay, that's it; I've been standing here taking deep yoga breaths, hoping to accept that I'm powerless to alter the fact that, while we showed up first, we are about to see the Cliffs of Moher not from an open-air deck but from behind water-spotted windows. What's the worst that can happen?  You waste an hour of your life.  You took Dramamine, so you're not going to get sick.  It's just an hour.

And yet.

We are powerless in the face of the brochure.

If you find yourself feeling like this is it, enough is enough, and feel compelled to pipe up and make a few remarks about what's going on, maybe wonder aloud why an enormous tour group has waltzed past everyone else and is now taking all of the outdoor seats on the boat, and you do it loud enough so that F. Jason S. can hear you and maybe this is when he'll either explain the mystical power of the brochure or clue in as to how far short he's falling of being a competent crowd manager, swallow that thought.  Don't start in at all, because Fat Jason Statham doesn't want to hear it.  He might instead just say, "Give it a rest, man," out of the corner of his mouth and get a little titter from the crowd,  just enough for the light to go on and encourage him to continue.  "It's not United Airlines, man," he might say, perhaps revealing a bit too much of what he thinks of Americans who whine when he's trying his half-hearted best to do his job.  "It's actually worse," you might say back, which is actually pretty clever but come on; it's too late.  

Here's the life hack:  

If all of this has already happened, your best move is not to keep going but to cut and run, explain that there's no way this boat ride is going to work for you, gather up what's left of your dignity and walk back up the dock, sit there for an hour and let your unruffled wife do her best to enjoy seeing the mighty Cliffs of Moher at their base from behind a water-spotted window.  Don't go on the boat.  It's not going to be fun and you might spend the whole time thinking up a scathing Trip Advisor review, only to find that by the time the cruise is over you're so exhausted from being aggravated that a Trip Advisor review seems too monumental a task to even consider. 

This was supposed to be the most relaxing part of my day.

Thank you, Shannon ferry. 

The most relaxing part of my day came later as a complete surprise and also involved a water crossing.  After finishing up our very disappointing cruise (and no, I can't remember the name of the place that runs the blue ship because you'd better believe if I could I'd be telling all of you), we had a great lunch at the Ivy Cottage (2/2, Ivy Cottage; nice work) and loaded back into the Nissan Not Imported for three hours of terror that actually turned into about an hour of terror and two hours of just driving, interrupted completely by surprise by the Shannon ferry, which appeared a half-mile after Siri told us to "Turn left on the Wild Atlantic Way."  

Boom.  Suddenly we found ourselves in line for the ferry, a very expensive ferry (20 EU for a 20-minute crossing) but a quiet, not crowded, polite ferry, sans any of the elements that made my earlier boat ride so aggravating.  Thank you, Shannon ferry, and good thing I was still working with that Dramamine I'd taking after breakfast. 

The second most relaxing part of my day was -- also surprisingly -- the 20-minute stretch on

Squirrel tracks up a tree. 

an unnamed farm road that Siri sent us on somewhere north of Listowel to save us six minutes. The relaxing part happened when the road shrunk until it was, finally and honestly, a single-track, removing all of the pressure and terror of the single-track roads that are impersonating two-lane highways, which is most of the roads in Ireland so far.  We drove without a care through beautiful farmland on a road my mother would've described as "squirrel tracks up a tree," calmly pulling to the side of the road on the rare occasions that we saw a vehicle coming the other way. 

We arrived here in Dingle an hour ago.  It took three-plus hours to travel the 100 miles between here and Doolin.  During that time, the topography of Ireland completely changed, something that doesn't surprise us anymore.  Cliffs are out; rolling green hills (every imaginable shade of green) are in.

Here's some life hack numbers for you today:

2 -- number of jackets I brought on this morning's cruise, imagining I'd ben spending an hour standing on deck, the ocean spray crashing briskly into my face. 

0 -- total amount of time, in minutes, I wore either jacket.

200 -- passenger capacity of the Doolin Star, a key component to F. Jason's argument in favor of letting the entire tour bus cut in line.  "We've only got 100 booked.  There's 200 seats."  Yes, Jason.  100 of them are indoors, behind water-spotted windows.

3 -- total number of tour bus occupants who shoved me out of the way to get to gain entry to the Doolin Star (while my wife glared at me), including one older woman who employed an impressive swim move to get by. 

2 -- actual Irish people who spoke to us last night at a packed O'Connor's pub, where the decor runs to U.S. dollar bills and law enforcement patches taped to the wall.  They were from a very small town in the north.  One had spent two years living in Naples, Florida where there are "lots of Jews."  This is something I already knew.

4 -- total number of times I hit my head on the ceiling while getting out of bed at the Doolin Inn.  That was the only negative of an otherwise delightful or, as they say around these parts, lovely, experience. 

5 -- total capacity of our room at the Dingle Bay Inn.  Three beds.  To paraphrase Elwood Blues, "Lots of SPACE in this room."

Don't forget your life hack.  If things spin out of control it's okay to cut your losses, like if you're on the way to a bar mitzvah retreat and you flash back to the time you had to go on a grad school program retreat and you suddenly realize that no retreat is going to end well for you, go ahead and insist you stay home.  Even if they protest at first, it'll be better for everyone in the long run.  Not that I've ever had that happen, of course. 

But lets not focus on that.  We're in Dingle now, with three days ahead of us and reservations at the best restaurant in town.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get dressed.