Aside from visiting Williamstown and looking up the Family Tree, the other part of our mission was to cheer on Christy O’ as she ran the Dublin marathon. Christy was having some problems with a hip flexor and wasn’t planning to run a personal best, but she was determined to finish.
Christy’s friend Tony O’Donnell mapped out four spots along the race route and calculated the times that Christy would pass by. Our challenge was to find a taxi and negotiate Dublin’s maze of one-way streets and get to the next spot before Christy did. It sounds easier than it was.
This marathon had its share of people dressed as super heros, cartoon characters and even a couple bottles of beer. Everyone got a good cheering-on, even the Danes in their Viking helmets. This surprised me a little, because of Ireland’s history with the Vikings.
Christy made the first stop right on time, and looked a lot fresher than most of us on the sidelines. I’ve lost track of the exact sequence of events, but do recall getting lost at St. James Gate by trying to take a short cut through the hospital. We took the light rail to one of the stops–I had to shove Norah into the crowded car with one arm and with the other yank Maureen on board before the doors closed. Maybe not as crowded as the Japanese subways, but pretty darn near.
With all modes of transport available to us, we cut it close arriving at a couple of our stops. Christy, on the other hand, kept chugging along right on schedule just like the Little Engine that Could, and didn’t appear to even break a sweat. Amazing.
