portmarnock day 9

july 23, 2007

denis decided to join me for my round at portmarnock today. he would be my caddy. and by caddy, i mean follow me around, take pics of me and help me find my ball. in no way would he carry my clubs.

tee time was at 8:06am. i left jake and luise's apartment, amid tears from the two of them (not really), at 6:30am because i did not want a repeat of last monday's almost missed time. on the way i was to pick up denis from sylvia's apartment. my directions out of dublin this morning were loads better than the last time i was leaving the city, i made it to turn 6 before i got lost. an hour later, i'm about 1/2 kilometer from denis and i can't find him. at 8:17, i finally picked him up. with a navigator, i was able to find the golf course in less than 20 minutes, meaning i was only about a half hour late for my time. luckily for me, the day was grey and there were few on the golf course. i checked in, was told that is was no problem that i missed my tee time and teed off about 15 minutes later behind a couple with a single caddy that reminded me of the havercamps from caddyshack.

the golf course was much easier than royal county down and royal portrush. the course was less hilly with few blind shots, and the natural rough grasses were kept at a reasonable height. because of this a played well. i bogeyed the 8th and 9th holes to shoot 39. no lost balls.

then it started to pour. and the wind kicked up. i started to back nine by losing 3 balls and doubling 3 of the first 4. i was fully dressed in my rain gear--two rain jackets and rain gloves. after the 13th hole i decided to take the gloves off. obviously they weren't helping. as a result, i was only 2 over in the final 5. final, 83. and pretty legit.

denis left me on the 12th hole to go for a run in the rain on the beach. and hour or so later, he met me on the 18th fairway as i finished my round. it was amazing that i lost only 1 ball while he was gone, even though he didn't really help me with that anyway. he was about as useless as the havercamps' libidos.

after the round, denis and i decided to tour around howth before we headed to the airport--he to go to poland and me before i headed to london for a little bit of work before poland. howth was a nice marina town. we had a pretty kickass lunch of fish and chips there before taking a nice stroll along the boardwalk.

then we headed to dublin airport. we dropped off the rental car with little problem--by the way, i recommend irishcarrental.com--then headed into the airport to check in. we were both flying ryan air.

ryan air was chaos. lines everywhere. and poorly marked lines at that. i walked around for 10 minutes looking for the line for my flight to london stansted, waited in line for 30 minutes to check in, was told that i would have to pay an €8 penalty/kg over 15 kg TOTAL for all checked baggage (in my case was 6kg), waited in another line for another half hour to pay the penalty then was finally given my boarding pass. luckily denis and i arrived 2 hours early for our flights. that was my first and last time flying ryan air.