And then there were 4.....

In a scene reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs, ALL 4 of us (yes I said ALL 4 of us) met up in a car park in Fermoy before pouring our hungover remains into Ash's monster truck. Reservoir Dogs might possibly be a stretch, maybe it was more Leaving Las Vegas, in fact now that I put some thought into it, I cant think of any movie it reminded me of. This is, from an artistic point of view, probably a good thing....


Of course the first thing that went through our minds when it became obvious that all 4 of us were there, (it became obvious roughly 5 min AFTER all of us had actually turned up) was where in the hell were we going to find a couch, tea and chocolate biscuits!!!


Galtee Mór was the plan for the day, just a short hike to flush the drink out. Have I mentioned the hangover????? The rain started as soon as we stepped into the jeep, and actually only stopped once we'd finished the walk. The superstitious could construe this as a sign. It is. A sign that hiking in Ireland is a sure fire way of getting the flu!!! Having said all that, the rain also had a hidden blessing, we got to see the full extent of Conors new gear. He looked hungover, very hungover, but he was a dry hungover, and there wasn't a boat embroidered anywhere. Unbelievable.


The hike went fairly well, despite a general unwanted uphill feel to Ash's navigation technique. He had decided that he recognised the way from the last time. While at face value this would seem a perfectly legitimate claim, the fact that we could only see a few feet in front of us meant he could recall a square metre of bog at a time. We were not as convinced as auld Ash and so against our better judgement we called on Sullie to bring forth the compass!! (this is the one bit of kit Ash hasn't purchased on his sneaky trips to Mahers sports) The ingenious manufacturers had made it so u didn't have to take it out of the original packaging to use it, so guess what's being returned next week!!! We took a quick bearing for our return, (we looked up what that meant when we got home) and proceeded to get back down off the new mountain Ash had brought us up!!!


The 4 of us travelling together actually works well, Ash and Sullie can run on ahead and scout out the break locations, while myself and Conor can lag behind, discussing food in between gasps for air. The rest of the climb went smoothly, we got a photo of Conor touching the cross at the top cos we felt that proof might be needed. We broke 3 more walking poles before we got back to the jeep, which wasn't really a problem as we had already broken the other 5 and were returning them anyway. We discovered that beer slows Sullie down, not a lot but enough so we can have 10 min quality time with him at the start of the day. And we finally discovered that we can stomach each other for at least 3hrs 22min, well 3 hrs anyway.

After a communal declaration that we were all off the drink until after the climb, Ash clarified his exact stance on the subject by adding...

1. That he'd have the odd few during the week.


2. That he definitely is having a few during a stop over in Amsterdam. (this varied from one to getting a round in...).


3. That he was bringing a hip flask for 'the cold nights'.
   

Conor just calmly mentioned he has 2 weddings to go to, while steering wisely away from the question as to whether he'd actually be partaking in any alcohol consumption at them. Myself and Sullie added nothing, which by a strange linguistic coincidence also means nothing!

The much advertised hangover was cheerily brought on by our Charity Night in Bru. Great night, the Wii Olympics didn't really capture the general public interest, but it took on a life of its own when we put on the boxing!!! There was a weird little American lad who told us that if we really wanted to make money we should get people to pay to try to beat him at the tennis. This we did, but we left out the 'at the tennis' bit. Made a fortune...The Munster jersey as well as Shayne Ward (notice the pretentious spelling of Shane) tickets were raffled off, with an amazing display of stool balancing by Ash. Conor ended up with the ShaYne Ward tickets and a friend of his won the jersey! I thought he looked a bit smug early in the night....

Other news form our amazingly exciting lives... The Irish Examiner did an article on us doing the climb. With a nice picture of myself and Ash on the bar in bru with rucksacks on. Lovely...I think I got altitude sickness up there. Also did a radio interview with Life FM, a christian radio station in Cork City... I hear people screaming IRONY!!!!! It went well, but at the end the interviewer said to enjoy the trip to which I replied 'You too'.. Bloody marvelous..

FOR PROOF PRESS PLAY!!!