Road Trip!!

You have the to be really careful on who you choose to go on a road trip with.  It's vital that you choose someone who is into decent music and is not in the least bit fazed by driving twenty km out of your way because you saw a sign saying 'free range eggs and sunflowers down here'.

I have . .. three of those kind've people in my life.  Sinead, Carol and Ger.  Sinead sometimes prefers looking at things from a distance, as in:"Nah, let's not get out of the car (cos it's raining) let's look at the deer from here (where it is dry)".  But she will travel any distance for a cool tea shop and pretty things to look at.

Ditto Carol.  We have driven all over the place just looking at nice things and drinking tea. Taking the longer routes because we're the only people we each know who will willingly take the longer route.

Most recently though, most of my road trips are done with Ger.  We went to Birmingham last November (staying with the Lily) and down to Cork last weekend for a one day round trip to a cake show.  Cackle.

I know I've mentioned our trip through Wales in a previous post so I'll just tell you about the Cork one.

It started off with me waking up 15 minutes after the alarm didn't go off.  Ugh.  I'd only just gone to bed too, or so it seemed.  I'd had the Sandymount crowd over for dinner the night before and had a couple of glasses of something nice, great night by the way if a little sad.

So, I arrived at Ger's house and she said 'Jesus, you look rough', nice, huh?  Thing is, I did look rough.  When I was leaving the house I thought I just looked disheveled and er, sexy but really I looked like I'd been dragged through a hedge backwards.  Twice.  I also drove to her house with shades on, in the fog.  I.  Was.  So.  Tired.  Not hungover, tired!!

Ger did the entire drive down as she didn't seem to think I was up to it.  It was a nice, quiet, trip until I noticed every place we passed by seemed to be named after Cheese.  Great motorway art too though, one piece looked like Wolverine's claws.  I wasn't allowed take it with us.  Yeah, so we drove, bickered over the radio station, thought about putting the world to rights and then just simply ignored each other because we were now both tired.  I had gone from tired, to happy and then very definitely to grumpy.

Hate the mornings.

We hooked up with fellow cakers and met with the lovely Kelly Cope, nabbed our cupcakes and then sat in Ger's car making sex noises whilst each eating a cupcake.  I've told you before, but I'll tell you again, the woman's cupcakes are magical.

Looked at more cakes and resisted buying stuff and then set off for home.  With me driving.

I think I made it to Cashel without getting too hysterical.  You know how you do when you're tired?  To keep us going Ger produced a bag of jellies  . . . we ate them all.  Then, 10 minutes later, another bag came out.  I think it was that second bag that did it.  We were hyper!  Like, REALLYHYPER, which isn't a good thing, necessarily, when you are driving a car.

The thing about eating that much sugar is, it wears off quickly. You eat a sweet and you turn into hyper bunny . . then, two minutes later, you crash.  So you have to eat more jellies.  

Then it turned into a competition.  Who could stick a jelly on their tongue and not bite it.  Then it turned into . . who could put a jelly on their tongue, stick their tongue out, not dribble and not eat the jelly.  My jelly shot off my tongue at one point I was laughing so hard and we, er, changed lane.  Bad drivers!!  Bad, bad, drivers.

Once the jellies were gone, and the sugar had really  kicked in, it was time for car karaoke.  Holy shit, that was the best fun I've had in a car.  EVER.

Saturday night radio is always brilliant.  It's geared at people getting ready to go out so the music is all pop and old and brilliant.  We gave it socks to Queen, Michael Jackson, The Bangles, The Lumineers (Ger is fucking hopeless at the "Ho", "Hey" callback bit, she disappointed with Arrested Development too).  Loads of stuff that I can't remember.

I have visions of all roadside cameras being trained on our car as we drove down the N7 or M7 or whatever it was called, first with our tongues out and then singing with gusto all the way home. 

Love road trips.

p.s. saw the above picture and thought "yeah, that's what we're going to do next time.  'Cos, there will be a next time".