EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALOctober 28, 1998
Tralee
Rich wants to test a theory about publishing before North America
wakes up. The Internet karma is getting more and more delicate. Tralee is bustling with
shoppers in the fair weather. I spend the afternoon browsing through the shops, and
at 5 o'clock the sun is disappears and we decide to call it a day and head back towards
Dingle. The network is crashing again.
Starting out of town and there is a big THUMP when the gears change.
Outside the city limits, we stop at a service station and then there is another
THUMP as start the car again. Rich tests the clutch just as we pass the last
petrol station and, sure enough, no clutch. There are some young fellows offering to help
us. A moppy-headed teenager asks, "how many litres? My friend used to have one of
these…it could GO". We study the reservoir and guess that there is
an airlock or a leak. We fill the reservoir and then we pump the clutch until we have a
little pressure to get us back to Tralee.
It is an hour's drive on a treacherous road back to Ballyferriter. The
road between Dingle and Tralee isn’t much but winding, climbing, bending and fields.
It would be better to spend the night in Tralee and have Alfi looked at in the
morning than to risk another failure.
The moppy-head recommends a Fiat mechanic and we check into a B&B
with the subheading "Traditional Irish Pub".
A pub has a sign outside that reads, "Acoustic Session Tonight
9:30" .It’s 10 o'clock and there are three patrons digesting the last 20 minutes
of a football game.
Our little room is directly above the Traditional Irish Pub. In
the early hours of the morning the pub evicts its last customers. They stumble up to the
room next door. Our door is missing three inches from the bottom of it. The water pipes
are dribbling in the wall behind our heads. The fire doors at either end of the hallway
slam repeatedly, reverberating through the plastered corridor and off the hardwood floors.
The flooring also magnifies the Clock Clock Clock of the hard-soled rhinoceros who is
undressing in the room above us. Everyone from the pub is getting ready for bed.
They direct each other to their respective rooms. They brush their teeth and flush the
toilet. The waterfall washes over us. And the rhinoceros does a few hundred laps before
finally landing on a soft, silent surface. We agree this is, by far, the loudest
establishment we have ever had the pleasure of not sleeping in.
