DAY TWENTY-THREE: NEAR-DEATH AT THE CLIFFS OF MOHER

I almost died a few hours ago.  No joke.  About three-fourths of the way through our epic Cliffs of Moher hike, ten minutes after we'd brazenly ignored the "RETURN TO THE OFFICIAL TRAIL" signs (for the second time), only a minute after we'd laughed off a close call where Sandra Bullock had to grab a fence post to navigate a very narrow spot on the edge of the cliff ("I was pretty freaked out there," -- S. Bullock), we hit another narrow spot and I stumbled.  For a split-second, my body weight (which is considerable) shifted to the left -- away from land, toward the cliff -- and I saw my life flash before my eyes.  "Whoah!" I said, but I could say "whoah!" in just about any situation including those far less grave.  Later, Sandra Bullock said she'd thought I said "whoah!" because a few horses were running toward me from the field to our right (inland).  That's not why I was saying "whoah!"

This "whoah!" was quite different.  It was the "whoah!" of panic, the "whoah!" you make when you don't have enough time to say anything else.  Honestly, it's not necessary that you say anything, but when you feel your weight pulling away from earth and toward a 600-foot plunge, you're going to say something.  Taken in that context, "whoah" is pretty tame.  

I was almost this guy.

I'd almost fallen off of the Cliffs of Moher, which are 200 meters (600 feet) of sheer rock face.  They would've found me down there a broken mess, my black Lululemon t-shirt still wicking away the last drops of sweat from my body even as everything else about me had ceased to function.

Such are the risks you take when you ignore the signs.  

To that point I'd been so careful and not even the least bit enthusiastic when Sandra Bullock insisted we leave the main trail very early (rules flaunting #1) because "it didn't come close enough (to the edge)," temporarily waiving her well-known acrophobia and forcing her husband to confront the fact that, while he is technically not afraid of heights and will stand transfixed in front of your high-rise floor-to-ceiling window, he cannot stop imagining how easy it would be to go over a cliff when there's but a small tuft of grass (or a slippery-looking rock) standing between him and a 600-foot plunge into the afterlife.  

Mostly I walked as far to the inland side of the trail (which was generally about three feet wide and lined at one point with rectangular rocks, which was convenient because if you fall

Convenient, multi-use rocks.

over and die they can just pluck out one of the rocks and use it as your tombstone) as possible, mentally Googling "how many people have fallen off of the Cliffs of Moher" and planning my escape strategy should my intrepid wife take a misstep.  

But eventually, you know, you get confident, and eventually you've already walked 12 miles and are looking for any kind of shortcut, so when we descended that hill on the other side of the visitors center (indeed "cheek-to-jowl," as characterized by Effie) and could either turn inland or take the shortcut on the coast, I thought more of my aching feet than my poor sense of balance and insisted we go west.  "Look at all of those people out there," I told my somewhat hesitant but more not wanting to endure another period of me blaming her for forcing me to confront my cliffside demons, "If they're out there it must be okay."

And it was okay, for awhile.  It was more than okay.  Like the entire hike, it was spectacular.  So spectacular that we snapped photo after photo trying to take a little bit of that spectacular home with us, only to look up each time from our phones wearing the vague look of disappointment usually seen on Disneyland goers after a lap around Tom Sawyer's Island on the Mark Twain Steamboat.  "I don't even know if a picture is worth taking," I said finally after yet another click produced an image whose drama measured about 0.003 percent of the real thing.  

I

Not pictured: 99.9997% of this scene's dramatic impact.

t doesn't "look just like Far Rockaway," though I can't think of a more outer borough thing for the New York guy I overheard at the visitors' center to say, other than "This guy don't wanna give up any of his land," which is what he said later, after warning me that the fence marking the inland parameter of the trail just past the center was electrified.  And it's not really a place to have someone take a picture of your butt while you peek coyly over your right shoulder, even if a young member of a traveling Italian co-ed school group did just that at an early vista point whose views seemed too stunning to ever be outdone until they were outdone about 10 minutes later. 

And it's not a place to have yourself photographed with your legs hanging over the edge, which is exactly what my friend Yukari's husband did somewhere on the trail a few weeks ago.  In her picture, Yukari herself laid on her stomach and looked down over the cliff, which seemed more reasonable to me and was in fact what I'd pictured myself doing today until reality set in and reminded me that the closer I get to that edge the more inevitable it is that I will fall off of it.

Plunges to one's death notwithstanding, I think I speak for both Sandra Bullock and myself when I say that the hike to the Cliffs of Moher (16 miles RT) is both an excellent way to get some cardio and an opportunity to see stuff you never thought you'd be able to see, like the time we saw the Matterhorn (the real one, not the one in Disneyland that you can see from Harbor Boulevard) and I stood there in the snow, thinking that sometimes just seeing something is enough.  

You don't even need to go to the visitors' center and learn about how the black rock on the cliffs is different from the lighter rock in the Burren and how it took millions of years, glaciers and probably volcanoes or some other catastrophic natural disruption to form these things.  I don't really care why there's a perfectly round hole in that rock 600 feet below us, I just think it looks really cool to see water fly through it.  And I'd love to know how those dogs got down there on those rocks, but I'm pretty happy anyway just watching them run all over the place like they've just had a successful jailbreak and can't believe their good fortune.  

Probably better than Far Rockaway. 

So despite my near-death experience, today was a good day, and a day that's also significant because it marks the halfway point in this trip.  We're 23 days in with 22 to go, which seems both unbelievable and believable and a little bit melancholic as we look ahead to tomorrow, which will begin with a boat ride at the base of the cliffs, followed by a three-hour (!) drive to Dingle and the next phase of the trip.  No, the Cliffs of Moher don't look like Far Rockaway, though who am I to say?  I've been to Jones Beach but I've never been to Far Rockaway.  

And good luck to the guy on the phone at the visitors' center who interrupted his relaxing trip to Ireland with a buddy to sit down at a picnic table and put a call into work, where something was up with the bottle spacers and we have to make sure we make the shift from 64 ounces to 10 ounces and then back as smoothly as possible, unlike those other guys, who'll probably forget to shift back.  I hope that works out for you, random southern guy with a goatee, because patience like yours deserves to be rewarded.  Seems like a longshot, though.

How about some glad to be alive numbers for today?

3,147,092 -- photos taken by people visiting the Cliffs of Moher.  All of them will be disappointing, even the ones where someone's standing way too close to the edge, making a weird face.  Maybe not the one of that girl's butt.  

4 -- dogs frolicking on the rocks below.  How did they get there?  How will they get back up?  Was that one a corgi or a corgi mix?

34,748 -- steps taken.  16.04 miles.  That might be a family record for "longest hike."

702 -- height, in feet, of the Cliffs of Moher at their highest point.

80 -- speed limit, in Km/H, of the tiny little road (which claims to have two lanes) you walk along for awhile before you find the trailhead
66 -- people who have fallen to their deaths from the Cliffs of Moher since 1993.  18 were international visitors to Ireland.

34.2 -- average age of people who've fallen to their deaths from the Cliffs of Moher since 1993.  

6 -- people jumping off one of the (much lower) cliffs into the Atlantic ocean for a swim: three boys, one girl and two adult men, while several other people sat on a nearby rock, applauded and took pictures.  What did you do on your last family outing?

107 -- opportunities, within the eight miles of the cliffs trail, to make very poor choices that actually put your life in danger.

Finally, I offer an apology to the Irish guy in a sport coat from last night who just wanted to watch the group play traditional music (and a Dan Fogelberg cover that didn't slip past this Gen X 1970s survivor) but couldn't hear anything because the loud Americans in the corner wouldn't shut up.  I hear you, man.  I tried to get that woman we met from Washington D.C. to stop talking about the Democratic debate but she was determined.  We'll be better tonight, I promise.