Bike Ride Fiasco... OH NO!

 

26 miles on a bike? Oh, that's no big deal. Well let me just start off by saying that 13 miles each way makes it much less daunting, but when the 13 miles there are at an incline it is much more difficult. This bike ride was beautiful. The photo above is from the coast as we were biking. We went out 13 miles to the town of Kilmacthomas. It was a small town that reminded me of Kilkenny, which I visited on the way down to Dungarvan. We hung out in the town for a couple of hours and then decided that we were going to brave the ride back to Dungarvan. Overall, the bike ride was one of the best decisions I have made. I am so grateful to have been allowed to go on that ride and to see parts of the country that I would not have otherwise seen. 

On the path, we entered an area that was much more enclosed than the rest of the trail. Attached to the left is an image of that part of the trail. This enclosed area led to a tunnel, where were were underground because of the surrounding terrain. Once the ground went up to be high enough that we could not see anything other than the walls of the trail we started to notice fairy doors. Each door was unique and looked like they had been hand-painted, and they were scattered all around the walls. The fairy doors reminded me of a conversation that we had in my Irish Literature class. During the previous week, we had been talking about "The Stolen Child" a poem by William Butler Yeats. This poem talks about fairies taking a child away from his home and away from the world that he knows. There is a belief in another dimension in the poem, and I believe that these fairy doors represent a similar concept. A belief in something outside of our realm of possibility. We came up with the idea to have each townhouse decorate a fairy door, take another ride down this trail, and then leave our mark on Ireland that way. 

Now, to the fiasco, this bike ride seemed completely normal but someone (it was me) took a tumble off of their bike. We were going downhill and immediately needed to make a left turn at the bottom of the hill, I miscalculated the distance in my turn, and I biked right into a fence. I had two options, go over my handlebars and launch myself into the wooden fence, or jump off the bike and roll into some bushes. I picked the bushes, and I think that was probably the right choice. I was not seriously injured, and other than a few scrapes from the branches I fell into I am completely okay.