Corcaigh

Cork is a great city.  Although I stayed a little bit out of the city center it was very walkable.  The University College Cork is amazing.  There are some parts of it that look right out of a Harry Potter movie.  Shane was nice enough to walk me around, and having a historian take you on a walk through anywhere is educational.

St. Finnbarre's Cathedral is amazing.  The really interesting piece of it to me was some of the work that had a huge eastern influence in the architectural design near the altar.  Another cathedral that really impacted me was the Franciscan cathedral in the city.  It left an indelible mark.

 Shane has some really nice Ogham Stones near his house.  It was really cool seeing these after looking at the writing in college. 

One of the really cool day-trips from Cork was to the Drombeg Circle.  As with most anywhere in Ireland, the views were amazing. 

Kilkenney Castle

I was excited to see the insides of my first castle. The tough part is I can't show you the cool things inside because there is no photography. Very smart for the ministry of tourism.

It is a beautiful place.  It would be nice to spend a day or two in the town, but we needed to get to Cork before it got dark as I was driving and it was a little scary at points on the narrow streets and folks driving quickly.

Mountrath

One of the reasons.. no it wasn't just for the Guinness Factory tour.. I wanted to go to Ireland was because my mother's family is from there.  Specifically a speck-on-the-map town called Mountrath.  Her sister, my Aunt Mickey diligently researched the family tree and found the town.  We have not mad the connection with anyone living there as related yet, but I am sure that will come.

I stopped and talked with the butcher for a while. He was a very nice man and I felt welcomed there.  I was giving Shane a ride back to Cork, so we grabbed some tea there too since we were in for a long day with Kilkenney Castle on the way.

All in all it was a nice town, nothing truly notable about it. Oh, it did win the 'Tidy Town' award last year.  Ireland has this cool competition in each county where all the towns compete on being the tidiest.  Based on frontage landscaping, rubbish, and other factors I don't know.  Very smart.

Coffee and Guinness

There is an AWESOME pastry spot in Dublin called the Queen of Tarts.  Cool name, I thought the sign inside was pretty cool too.

Hanging out with Shane after gettin my ink done. Thank goodness for Guinness!

Dublin

Sightseeing in Dublin was a blast.  So much is in walking distance.  The old Dublin wall was cool, and the museums had a lot of educational pieces that got me more enthralled with the Emerald Isle.  Since I was staying right across the street from Trinity University, I did see the Book of Kells. No, no pictures were allowed.  It is as beautiful as the published pictures. The rest of the tour in the museum is really cool too.  It ends up in the old Trinity Library.

I also got to see the new Iron Man and Robin Hood movies while I was there.  Those were a real treat.  Something about the mundane.. going to a movie, making dinner.. they are all so nice to do while I am on R&R because it helps me detach from the world I just came from.

Go Leinster!

Apparently the Magner's Cup is a little controversial.  As with all things Irish there is always some angle on it that comes up hot.  After learning some of the history it seems like they - well I guess we.. being  of 1/2 Irish descent... love to get into a riot and burn things down. Actually that sounds pretty accurate except I never have any matches handy.

I was fortunate enough to be in Dublin during the semi-final fixtures or the Magner's Cup.  I was rooting for Leinster.  I started following the IRU (Irish Rugby Union) a little while I was getting ready to head on R&R and Leinster seemed like a solid team. I was right.  They won the match!

Of course I had to grab a scarf while I was there.  It was a great time, the only thing that might have been better is if I had one of my new Irish drinkin' buddies there.

Castles and Ink

So many cathedrals and castles. The city of Dublin has so much history it is amazing.  Every where you look there is an ancient wall or cobblestone.  I was savvy enough to stay near the Temple Bar area of town, so I could walk to a lot of the classic sights.

Of course I couldn't leave without a bit of Ireland and what better way than to indelibly mark it on my skin? 

The Dublin Castle was pretty cool even though I never made it inside.  By the time I managed to get over to that side of town it was closed the two days I tried.  However the bread pudding in the cafe.. Good Grief!  Soooo good.  The gardens out back were really cool too. I got a little dizzy trying to follow the maze pattern with my eyes.

Áth Cliath

Someone asked me about the blue jacket in all my pictures.. it was FREAKING COLD when I was there.  The worst was the day it felt like almost freezing rain.  I really didn't bring too may cold weather clothes because of the average mean temps are usually pretty mild in May.  Not this May.  I toughed the cold days out and had a blast nonetheless.   

Dublin, my home for the first week of R&R.  I had so many mini adventures here.  Starting with the Guinness Factory.  My buddy Timmy hooked me up with the Factory tour.  What a great way to start off after not being allowed to drink spirits of any sort for over six months. Needless to say I was a little toasty after two of them.  The fresh stuff tastes incredible. The tour was very well set up and informative.  I think the coolest for me was the 600 year lease for the building and grounds.

Boats, Trains and Aeroplanes...

After managing to get through customs pretty quickly and a painless Tube ride, I found myself at the train station.  EVERYONE who had been diverted to England was trying to get to Dublin.  The train was packed.  I sat net to a cute girl from Vancouver after wrangling my seat from someone who was in it and grumbling the whole time I made him get out of it.  I was thinking, "don't even start buddy.." I was getting tired now.  It is about 1930 on the 5th, my third day of travel and so far, I have had intermittent sleep the entire time with only one evening of it horizontal.  Boy does that make a difference.  The train was jam-packed. 
A serious fire hazard if you ever had one.  People and bags everywhere.  The train system was never engineered to handle this much luggage.  On to the ferry station.  Then of course yep.. at 2300 we started to take the BUS to the ferry from the terminal. The ferry was leaving at 0200 on the 6th to get into Dublin at 0600, whereupon I took the Taxi to my hotel. Whew! I crashed HARD!  I made it. Look out Ireland. 

Look out on the Emerald Isle!

 It really didn't sink in completely that I was getting a respite from the craziness of Iraq until I was on the flight the next evening.  It is difficult to get any sleep the whole time you are transient.  Folks come and go at all hours to catch their flights.  You can't turn all the lights out in the tent, and the loudspeakers announcing personnel who need to report to a certain manifest tent go off all day/night. They are pretty loud.  I went to get ticketed around 1300 on the 4th.  Then I had to report at 2000 to get the customs brief at 2100.  Then we get transport to the commercial airport.  The flight leaves for Germany at 0030 on the 5th.  So, another night with little sleep.  Needless to say I racked out hard for the first hour on the plane. Lufthansa, my favorite.  I got into Germany at about 0600 so I went to grab a bite as my next leg to Ireland wasn't until 1000. I grab a nice leisurely breakfast then go look for my flight to see what gate it is at. 
 I find it is not on the screen anywhere.  I feel really confused.  So I go to the courtesy desk and ask about the flight. Volcanic Ash has closed the Dublin airport. Aw, heck!!
"So what do I do now?", I ask.
The agent says, "well you can do a couple things.  We do have a flight leaving at 1600 today. You will have to be on standby for that if hte airport opens up.  There is also a 1500 flight to Heathrow, but if you do that all travel expenses from Heathrow to your destination are at your own expense."
  I think on it for about thirty seconds.... "Heathrow." Now I have to figure out how to get from Heathrow to Dublin... Train.  I look and I have 2 hours from landing in London to get to the train station - that includes customs.  My handy computer and the gracious WiFi in Frankfurt inform me there is a special for 30EU I can get a Train/Ferry combo. Done!

I was lucky to be on the last leg of the flight to the staging base in Kuwait where I waited for my commercial flight.  By the time I got assigned a transient tent with some other guys it was around 1700.  The facilities there were decent, internet cafe and gym so I was all set for waiting to get a flight hopefully the next day. It was refreshing to wear 'real' clothes again.

The whole R&R (Rest and Recuperation) Leave trip to Ireland was an adventure in itself.  First off I still had to worry about the rumblings of Eyjafjallajokul (the volcano in Iceland that has messed up so much air travel for the last month).

I left my FOB by a cushy Air force ride.  Well let me back it up a little, for fixed wing flights they want you at the terminal (tent) two hours in advance. That is when I consider the travel really beginning.  This is on the 3rd of May close to noon.

CHUs and Aeroplanes

Home sweet home. Trailer living for a year.  Containerized Housing Units or CHUs (pron: chews) are a big step up from living in a 12-man tent on a cot the last tour.  I still miss my own bed though.  The only saving grace is that I do get my own as a commander so I can get some rest when I don't have a Red Cross Message, IDF alert, or some other solider issue cropping up in the night.


No, I didn't crash it. This is on one of the bases where my guys fuel aircraft.

Tito!

After traveling for days across the Atlantic we arrived in Kuwait.  From there we ended up getting split in many pieces to go to our various locations we were going to be operating out of in Iraq.  The flight I was on with about 1/2 my company had a surprise passenger on board.  The fighter, Tito Ortiz was on a USO tour of Iraq and we ended up on the C-130 he was flying on.

FOB (Forward Operating Base) DELTA was a decent place to be at.  The climate was better than most places in Iraq and the only really nasty part was when the black cloud from the Chinese oil wells drifted overhead choked you out and dropped oily soot out of the sky.

The "T" wall. Around living and working areas we have concrete barrier walls made of segmented concrete slabs.  These serve as protection from IDF or indirect fire attacks.  They are very effective and a pretty cool engineering feat to have as modular building blocks to make instant barrier walls around an area.





Another interesting architectural piece common to a lot of camps, and FOBs are destination signposts.  It reminds folks of home, and gives you a reference when you are in the numbness of deployment and forget about home.