Monday

Monday, 4/14 (Cong to Westport) Mayo County

I have breakfast with a young French couple who speak little English. It is a slightly strained experience especially since the young man hates Coca-Cola and McDonald's, clear emblems to him of Yankee bad taste. The bike trip today of 30 miles is generally low rolling and fairly scenic in the last half. When I roll into Westport at 1:00 p.m., the town is a flurry of activity. Traffic in this resort and market town is surprisingly congested. The streets and cafés are packed with high school students who are on lunch hour. The Bord Failte is closed until 2:00 p.m. for lunch, so I find a bakery and have a coffee and bismark and join an 82 year old Catholic priest at a table. He tells me he spent 50 years in L.A. and Hollywood with parishes. Even though he's a fairly recent resident of Ireland, he seems to suffer from Irish teeth, and he drools between his few remaining teeth and often spits crumbs of scone in my direction. I do a lot of dodging and weaving during our conversation and take to discreetly putting my hand over my coffee cup. Most of the young people, many of whom are girls, smoke, and the girls all seem to wear the same stacked storm trooper ankle high black boots. This combination plus often dyed hair makes the girls look hard. Back in college we'd call them "townies."

There are some odd blemishes in Westport - in addition to the endemic tattered look of garbage in the river and ditches. For one, I am panhandled by a young woman of perhaps twenty who is pushing a stroller with a sleeping baby. I give her 30p. and without comment she shoves off. I also watch two mothers sitting on a park bench surrounded by eight children paying almost no heed to the bouncing, screaming kids who are no more than a couple feet from speeding street traffic. I move away from them because they are making me nervous, but as they leave their bench they walk by my bike, and I have to yell and whistle at one of the little urchins who is about to climb up on it. Of course, the mother says and does nothing. I have a vision of my heavily-laden bike crashing down and breaking something. The tourist office sets me up at the Cedar Lodge B+B, and my hostess Maureen fixes me a pot of tea and some fruit cake.

I set off for town where I send a fax to Marcia at the local print shop, and then I head off in pursuit of the Westport House, a beautiful 18^th century manor house. I watch a man and boy try to round up some sheep that are in a field adjacent to the House, and I stroll the grounds a while along with some locals who are out for exercise. I have a great seafood pasta dish at O'Malley's restaurant. I will return later for Irish music at Matt Molloy's (of Chieftain fame), but after looking at the map, the newspaper, and the Lonely Planet guide to Ireland, I hit the sack. (214 miles)

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