Hacking and Marathon Training

Considering that I’ve managed to avoid any semblance of ill health since August, I suppose that it’s my deserved time to get a cold. And the health advice that I’ve received from everyone and their little brother about the best high-octane, 900-proof “cough elixir” has been enough for a journal entry of its own. I’m not really sure if the goal of these brews is to actually make the cough go away, or to slay the patient enough that he forgets he ever had the cough to begin with (or indeed, lungs, or a name, etc.). Intoxicating witch-doctor potions aside, it’s nice just to chill out in my room for a few days, anyway.

I talked to my family back home, and there was recently a snowfall that put 22 inches on the ground in the lower Midwest-Bluegrass region. I’m going through a daily debate with myself about which type of cold is more palatable; the crisp, snowy, way-below-freezing winters that were fairly common in the countryside where I lived until I was thirteen, or the above-freezing, hell-spawned three-month-long gale that personifies Winter 2008 in Maynooth. I thought that giving up ice cream shakes would keep me from getting ice cream headaches, but no! I need but to walk outside in the opposite direction of the wind for a few seconds, and the sensation smites anything a chocolate malt could ever do. I’m told that June here is beautiful, though, and the idea of eighteen hours of daylight sounds really, really appealing right now.

There’s something kind of quaint about this dank weather, too. The roaring fires in the pubs really just accentuate that people here try to make the best of the harsh conditions outside. Or maybe it just really amuses the pub people that my ale of choice is the one that only elderly Irish men drink (which leads me to think: was I born like this?). Whatever the case, it seems that the lesson that I’m learning over and over again is that a person can get through anything when the right people are there with him. And what the past couple of months have lacked in uplifting weather, have been more than made up with unforgettable people with whom to shiver through the demonic wind-gusts.

Case-in-point: I gave a piano lesson this evening to the daughter of this wonderful Singaporean family from my church here. The lesson had lasted fifteen minutes (I was planning for about forty-five) before the parents came in and swept me into the kitchen to this incredible buffet of international food. They told me that they know what it’s like for an international student to live alone in a different country, and now we feast together after the lessons (and I get a take-home bag!). And now I’m not sure if I’m not the one reaping the greater long-term benefit from teaching the piano lessons, when the people are so hospitable. But we’ll see. I wonder if they’ve ever had cornbread?

This evening is the beginning of my Easter Break. I’m using the travel stipend that comes with my scholarship to go to Geneva, Switzerland and Santiago de Compostela, Spain, each for four nights. I’m also traveling up to Northern Ireland with a good friend from my music program to stay on his farm and hang out with his family for a few days. Although I grew up raising llamas for a few years, I’ve never actually stood within an arm’s distance of a sheep, and lo, this languished yearning shall soon come to pass. Not to mention seeing the Giant’s Causeway, the Mourne Mountains and other rational reasons to go up north. School has been great, and my M.A. thesis research has become an absolute dream-come-true, but the break is also more than welcome.

Anyway, the Belfast Marathon training was going better than expected until this lung-bug attacked me. I haven’t endured any running injuries so far, and this may actually be a good rest, if only just to scare away the very thought of shin splints. A canal stretches from Dublin to somewhere in the middle of the country, and there’s a makeshift mixture of footpaths, gravel, asphalt and mud that lasts the entire length of the canal. It’s excellent for running. From my dorm to the canal to the Intel plant and back is almost exactly eight miles, and I need but to run closer to Dublin to go even further. I was pleased to find out that the discontinued (and thus, scandalously inexpensive compared to others) model of the GPS watch that I ordered from the Internet actually works, and tells me how far I run and at what speed. The watch, combined with the GPS receiver I have to wear to get a signal and the Camelback that holds all my water, makes me look more like Darth Vader after taxes than someone training for a race. It certainly seems strange that even in the Silicon Valley of Ireland (Leixlip, with its two major technology plants), people look at me like I’ve grown two heads when I brandish this dorky, high-tech gadget during a run. I thought they would have been envious; two heads would double the amount of computer programming output, after all. Still, I have little to worry about when I run. I’ve learned not to heed the puzzled gazes, and if I do end up with a running injury, I’ll just ask someone for his cough elixir recipe.

A Day During My Visit to Portugal in November

I wrote this while I was there; and then forgot it. I'll put some pictures up in a few days:

Visit to the Algarve, Portugal

The total cost of this trip was probably above $400 dollars. I found a fairly good deal at a 4-star beach resort in Praia de Gale, which is about 40 km west of the Faro Airport for $40 per night (for four nights). The flight was probably about $150 total, and the rental car was a little over $100. It would have been less if I knew how to drive a stick-shift, but unfortunately the very same people who claim that it’s a right of passage for American males to learn to drive a stick are the very last people to let you learn on their cars, and I never learned how. Thus have I become well acquainted with my little five-door Fiat Punto, with an automatic transmission that behaves more like a stick-shift than anything else I’ve ever driven. Kind of weird, but well worth the rental fee. Because I turned 23 two weeks before I got to Faro, I didn’t have to pay the extra fee for being underage, although it was through TravelRent, a car company I’ve never heard of before.

Driving in Portugal is wild; on the major highway (notice the singular use of the term) that passes through the Algarve, the 120 km speed limit is more or less nominal, and I found plenty of people going 20 km above that with no problem. The back-roads are really scenic; the tile roofs, white-washed villages, orange groves and large hills to the north really make this place all I’ve imagined it to be. I drove from my hotel in Gale to a town to the western inland part of the region called Silves, which is a dramatic little town composed of a steep hill covered with little white houses and protected by a towering, 12^th century Moorish castle at the top. The church next to the castle even had old ladies dressed in all black congregating outside, just like in a movie. I toured through the castle, which was under restoration so that the old Moorish gardens could (after a millennium) again take over the courtyard. After a blindingly nervous drive down one-way streets that were built way before the automobile was ever invented, I continued westward through the Algarve’s hill country.

I made my way through the countryside to Monchique after a considerable climb into the hills. As I parked in the town to talk to my mom on the cell phone, I met an elderly British lady who had been living in the picturesque little mountainside town for a few years, and who pointed me up the mountain to what’s called the Foia of Monchique, an incredible mountaintop view from which you could easily see Faro, and probably into Spain. I sat at the mountaintop café and drank a cappucchino, admiring the view, before making my way down the mountain and westward, along the ridges, until I reached the western coast of Portugal. From there I proceded southward to the town of Sagres, which sits on a cape that composes the extreme southwesternmost point of continental Europe. The very end of the cape is called Cabo de S. Vicente, a gorgeous place to view the sea-cliffs that tower above the ocean for the entire visible coastline.

A few miles from S. Vicente I found a parking lot, and saw path that went down the steep cliffs to a hidden beach. I spent the next hour there, most of it in the frigid water (although the air outside was probably in the lower 70s). Apparently the little cove was so hidden that the families didn’t see much point in wearing clothes there. Those Europeans! I tried not to look (if I did, it would have seemed more like a wild game preserve than a beach, if you get my drift), and made my way back to the road for one final stop, to a Napoleon-esque castle on another cape called Forteleza. The cannons were still in place, although there wasn’t much as far as narratives go, especially since it was probably the place that Henry the Navigator set up his famous seafaring school in the 15th century. What was really neat about the place were two large holes in the ground that weren’t visible unless you almost stumbled into them.When you look inside, you see that they fall maybe 150 into the ground, and you can hear the ocean swell inside them. One of them, you could even see the passageway with the open sea at the end. I had run out of film by then, but I hope I see some more. Were they alternative escapes in the old days? Maybe. It sure must have been really cool to be a soldier back in the days when that fort was occupied.

Southern Portugal in early November was warm and sunny; with temperatures in the 70s and the water just a little colder than I would like. And then there's the nude beaches, which resemble large animal zoo exhibits than beaches, if you get my drift. Those Europeans! The sand is mostly golden-colored, and the limestone rock formations have amazing caves that you an explore on the beach (although some of them flood at high tide). Climbing the rock formations and watching the sunset was awesome. Maybe that's where the bouldering sport came from.

I suppose I've typed enough. I'm about to finish semester one over here; I've got a couple more fun travel stories to post up here in the meantime. Adios.