The England Trip

It's 4am in Ireland, and 8pm on the west coast of Canada, where the Timbers are playing Vancouver in the first round of the players. The first half is over, no one has scored, and my video feed has worked for all of about 7 minutes. And I'm tired.

Anyway, Wednesday I flew from Cork to Liverpool and then took trains all the way over to Harrogate to visit an old army buddy. He met me at the train station and walked me to the pub, which was fine with me. It was the perfect place: hideous, dingy carpet; frightening bathrooms, and loads of great handpulled ales. Mmmmhmm! Some drunk 17-year-olds latched on to us outside the pub and bummed cigarettes and tried to talk shit, which ended up being hilarious. And no, they weren't 'taking the piss' - they weren't smart enough for that - they truly were being serious.

Drunk Teens (DT): "Coors is a really good beer, I really like it."
Us: "Coors? ....Are you sure? I mean, yeah. Great beer" *rolls eyes*

DT: "Why do you call is 'soccer'?"
Us: "Cuz you invented the word. Thanks."
DT: "No we didn't!"
Us: "Yep. Ya did. Again, thanks from us, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and any other country I'm forgetting that calls it soccer as well."
DT: "Oh."

DT: "Is Olde English any good?"
Us: *snickers wildly* "Yeah man, it's great."
[OE, in case you're unfamiliar with the stuff, is a beer that comes in a 40oz bottle (two Imperial pints) and it's, at most, $2. Homeless people drink it, usually from a paper bag.]

Anyway, dumb kids aside, the night was good. I chatted with the bartender for quite awhile, which was nice after a few days without talking with a lot of people (happens when traveling alone, sometimes). Plus, while up there I got to try some different beers, including Deuchars pale ale, which was really fruity and not really my thing, but nice for in between normal stuff. Then I had some Roosters, which I vaguely remember being good, but I was getting really tired by that point.

Thursday, my friend's coworker was having a 'pub lunch' going away party at this pub in the middle of nowhere. (Ok, looking at a map now, it's just outside of Harrogate, but it really seemed farther.) His friend drives like the original British Land Rover. It's like something out of National Geographic. It's basically a giant metal box with gears that go down into the negatives, and the behind the back seat is a fuel tank you could power a small neighborhood with. The pub had the same hideous carpet as the one the night before, except cleaned so you could see the bizarre patterns and color combinations clearly, PLUS there were matching curtains! Thankfully, too, cuz the rustic, country decor was a little too cutesy without it. More beer! Something called One Leg Up, which was so delicious that I didn't even look to see what other beers they had.

Most of the rest of Thursday was spent trying to nap away the gianormous steak and ale pie from lunch, flipping channels, and playing with my friends two adorable kids. Later on it was back to the pub to hear a band, catch up on the past two years of crap, and drink more beer! This time it was the local stuff Black Sheep (which I'm pretty sure is at my grocery store at home), and some nasty Hoegaarden, which thoroughly kicked my ass.

Next day was back to Cork, so I was up early and got dropped off at the train station with enough time to spare to eat breakfast, which was amazingly, considering the wealth of Harrogate, the cheapest meal I've had all trip. The train ride itself was going swimmingly - I'd made my connection in Leeds without being stabbed (there's something about the name Leeds that just sounds nasty, and I always think of grime and hooligans) and gotten a mocha - until some idiot ran his car into a rail bridge outside of Manchester, causing all trains to Liverpool to be delayed by an hour. I was so furious by the time the trains finally left that craphole station we were trapped in that I hardly even got excited when we went past Old Trafford. I got to the airport check-in counter with only eight minutes to spare and was in no mood to deal with the ditz who insisted that I needed a visa to get back into Ireland. Seriously, if she'd just read my passport, she'd have seen this was my FOURTH TIME entering that country, all other trips without a visa. Thankfully, the woman next to her gave her an your-an-idiot look and handed my passport back to me (it's not MY fault no one even looked at the thing when I came into the UK) and I even made it through security with enough time to pee before boarding.

England surmised: Lots of beer, some fast driving on narrow roads through sheep fields, more beer and strange decor. Good trip!

[bah, Vancouver 1-0 Portland. Video never worked again]