It was growing late on a wet, stormy night in Ireland and the innkeeper was worried. Three American women were overdue for their visit. He was right to be concerned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With phone in hand, he considered calling the Automobile Association to begin a search. But exactly where were they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ireland has over 3,000 miles of national roads and another 8,000+ miles of regional roads. That doesn\u2019t even take into account all the local roads that probably lead to someone\u2019s sheep ranch. So these women could be almost anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Driving a rental car in Ireland as an American driver is tricky at best. Everything is reversed. For starters, you\u2019re driving on the \u201cother\u201d side of the road. That\u2019s challenging enough. But to make things harder, you\u2019re seated in what we\u2019re used to calling the passenger seat and steering from there. But there\u2019s more. Most rental cars didn\u2019t have automatic transmissions. Therefore, you had to shift gears with your left hand and use your left foot to work the clutch. These unfortunate women were doing it at night and during a storm so violent, their full speed wipers weren\u2019t nearly speedy enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are areas of Ireland that get rained on 225 days a year. That doesn\u2019t leave many bright, sunny days. So it\u2019s not surprising that Ireland has analyzed all that rain and come up with \u201c11 Levels of Irish Rain.\u201d They range between \u201cGrand Soft and Dry\u201d to \u201cBucketing,\u201d and that\u2019s only Number 7. Moving all the way up to Number 11, we come to \u201cHammering.\u201d That pretty much describes what these three lost ladies were dealing with when they left the Dublin Airport for Clifden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next morning, I was pleased to see that the rain had subsided and was only \u201cRaining Stair Rods,\u201d Number 6 on the scale. This was still big, fat rain, but we were moving in the right direction. Entering the breakfast room, I was also pleased to see three women, all \u201cOf a certain age,\u201d enjoying their Irish breakfast. As the innkeeper walked by, I asked him, \u201cAre those the three missing women?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes, they are,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo when did they arrive and what happened to them?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey arrived quite late,\u201d he said. Then went on to explain that neither of them had ever driven a shift car, and all three were bad with directions. So using American ingenuity, they hatched a plan. Lady 1 would steer the car. Lady 2, seated in the passenger seat, would work the clutch. And when she did, she\u2019d call out \u201cClutch!\u201d This was the driver\u2019s signal to shift the gear. Lady 3, seated in the back with map in hand, called out directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later that morning, these three sprightly women headed off to a knitting workshop. But the rain was now down to Number 2, \u201cSpitting Out,\u201d the sun was playing peek-a-boo with the clouds and peace once again settled softly upon the green Irish countryside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was growing late on a wet, stormy night in Ireland and the innkeeper was worried. Three American women were overdue for their visit. He was right to be concerned. With phone in hand, he considered calling the Automobile Association to begin a search. But exactly where were they? Ireland has over 3,000 miles of … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-non-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-Gk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2624"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2626,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions\/2626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Jim is a semi-retired ad agency creative director. He enjoyed this trip to Ireland, where he and his wife drove on the correct side of the road much of the time. He’s convinced that leprechauns are in charge of all roadside directional signs.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"