Cornering Consciousness

The next morning we rose early to best play out our options; catch the early ferry to Heysham to find passage to London, or catch the afternoon ferry to Liverpool spend the night and goof around there. I trotted to the ferry terminal and found a package deal - ferry and train to London for a reasonable fare, giving us more time to goof around there instead. So, morning ferry it was. Ferry is somewhat a misnomer for this boat. It was huge carrying a half dozen lorries along with its other cargo. Mindy got online on board and was able to chat with the kids back home while I chatted with three motorcycle riders from the IoM on their way to Monaco on their bikes to ride the Grand Prix circuit and watch the F1 race. You can see them in the background, lucky sorts. It's a bit foreign to us Westerners what proximity does for Europeans. A little weekend jaunt to France for brunch? Why not. In Bruges in a couple of hours, n'est pas? No sweat. In the time it takes me to get from...

If I had a bucket list, touring the Isle of Man would be in the top three for two reasons; the Isle of Man TT - home/mecca of the world's oldest motorcycle race, and the film Waking Ned Divine , one of my favorites, shot entirely on the Isle of Man. So when resources and opportunity collaborated we set out on a trip to Europe to see all that we could in ten days resulting in what we now call the Short Attention-Span European Scaffolding Tour. It started in Dublin and took us all the way to Rome by train, plane, automobile, ferry and motorcycle, not in that order. Dublin was a flight destination chosen to make the transition to Isle of Man which for those geographically challenged sits in the ocean between Ireland and England - the UK's best kept secret. You can get there by ferry from Dublin (the plan) or from Belfast (plan B) if you know how to read encrypted ferry schedules for the off-season traverse of the sea. Off-season was the least of our worries though, since Mot...