A Week or so

I need to be honest with all of you: I've been in the country for a week now. Well, a week and two days. I landed at 12:45 EST in Toronto, Ontario and proceeded to collect my luggage.

I meant to get in touch with you a lot sooner than this, but time and tide ran away from me and I was left standing at Term. 2 departure gates with a heavy pack and a heavy heart. I had been intending, for about a month before hand, to hike around South Western Ontario for a couple of weeks packing in as many friends and family as I could before coming to rest on the home farm.

There's been a lot that's happened. Let me fill you in as much as I can. Be patient though, this might take some time.

I landed, like I said, in Toronto and from there I took the TCC into the city centre (that's Irish for downtown). I had forgotten how friggin big Toronto was. It was big, bigger than I remembered and bigger than I was ready for. Cork had no sky rises, no fast moving foot traffic and no roads big enough to be a car park (I later learned that they were in fact car parks, I had simply mistaken them for motorways).

Toronto did not have my house, my pub or my coffee shop. It did not have my supermarket, my buskers or my pub and it certainly did not have my pub.

I was small, alone and tired of carrying my big, stupid pack around.

But as I sat watching all this unfold in front of me, all these buildings, tree's, cars, people, buses, beer ads, Canadian flags, library's, university campuses, cabs, gas stations and bike lanes, as I watched all this unfold I realized that in a year plus two days I haven't been in a better position. In all the traveling I've done, all the places I've been, I've never been in a place that could be easier to navigate.

Toronto is still a foreign city to me, don't get me wrong; I was raised on a pig farm and hadn't spent more than a few days in the city. Despite being foreign, however, it was still Canadian. I had jumped into cities and countries knowing nothing of the culture, language or currency and made it out the other end; most often with scarce few marks resulting.

I took a deep breath. I was going to be okay. This isn't as scary as it might appear to be.

Yet still, somehow, I wanted to be on the next plane back to Cork.

Rescue Inspiration

There once lived a boy who loved to write. Writing was everything he did and everything he wanted to do. It didn't so much matter that he may not have been much good, nor that he new how to spelt or that grammar wasn't the bestest of things of his, it mattered only that he did it and loved it and did it because he loved it.

Then one day an evil came along and took away Inspiration. It came without warning, or calling card or befriending me on facebook; nothing that would aid our young hero in the recovery of Inspiration. It came and went like a wisp of wind leaving him helpless; helpless and scared.

He continued to think thoughts, but they didn't amount to much. The thoughts thunked remained un-wrote, un-developed, un-recorded. For the longest time he wasn't even aware that Inspiration had been taken. It wasn't until he looked back upon his work to find that there was precious little work to look back upon.

It was at this moment that our young hero took it upon himself to search for Inspiration, to hunt down that evil with his vorpal blade. To rescue poor inspiration.

This is the story of that rescue.

Thank you, and welcome back.

Bird Arrives

[I didn't have the courage to write about my arrival at the airport because I didn't want to jinx our operation]

I arrived at Shannon Air at around four in the afternoon. I had spent most of the ride deep in my current book, another by Milan Kundera that, like the other other one i've read recently by him did not live up to the first book of his I read. Having been so deep in the book I misjudged how long I had been on the bus and realized just in time that the planes landing all around me and the sudden emptying of the bus was telling me that it was time to drop the book, my snacks and water bottle inside my pack, grab it and my umbrella and leap off the bus as it peeled out of the drop-down zone.

Had I have been wearing a hat I would have had to reach back and bring it through the bus doors as it would have fallen off.

I can't go anywhere without that hat. At least I couldn't had I have been wearing one.

I looked up at the signs above the doors and a thirty-something backpacker trundled past me with his pack and destination clearly organized.

"Nice one, Indiana" he mustered with a smirk.

thanks for noticing I thought to myself while I replied with a grin of my own.

Through the doors I went searching for my second visiting sister and her travel companion. I found them looking rather confused, but on the brink of discovery. I quietly flanked around and popped up next to Steve.

"You look like you could use some help"



[happy birthday Big Dan. welcome to north of 22]