When we decided to come to Ireland, I extracted a promise from Alan that he wouldn't mention the weather every single day.  He's from Indiana, where rain, sunshine, snow and sleet, tornados and whatever else is heaped upon the landscape is fodder for hours of conversation.  He's been good to his promise and has not mentioned that it has rained every single day.  Sometime hard, sometimes light -- a condition my grandfather called 'a nice soft day' -- but every day.  So far, that's 66 consecutive days.

On the day we arrived, April 3, I thought it was a pretty typical spring day; temp around 50 degrees (which is something in the single digits in Celsius) and showers.  But today, June 8th it's still 50 degrees and showers.  It seems there is no march toward summer at all.  In between we've had one or two 70 degree days, including one last Monday.  I've learned not to let those days go by as I have on one or two previous occasions because they are few and far between.

Monday was a glorious sunny day.  It wasn't particularly warm but it was a beautiful day for a bike ride.  Now that we have our new bikes we decided to seize the day and do it!  I donned my very cute, but ultimately dorky, rain hat looking bike helmet and we were off to Dun Laoghaire, a pretty seaside village on the Irish Sea.  There's a nice bike trail that hugs the coast for the 7-mile trip.  There was a little street riding but mostly we were on a shared bike/walking trail for the trip there.  It was a great ride, we both got to figure out the gears, learn the tricks for getting into and out of our toe clips and generally get comfortable with our bikes.  We had lunch at Dun Laoghaire -- note my cute helmet on the handlebars in the picture.  It was a bank holiday so there were lots of people everywhere since bank holidays and sunny days are even rarer than a day without rain.  Everyone was happy.  Alan suggested that we ride back on the street so that we could get used to traffic on this shake-out ride as well.  That was a little hair raising but I found my assertive Washington, DC bike riding techniques emerged pretty quickly -- despite riding in the very unfamiliar left lane.  It was a lot of fun.  It rained that evening and has been continuously raining since then.

Next week is Bloomsday.  June 16th is the day James Joyce' Ulysses was set.  It's quite a big thing in Dublin and they milk it for the whole week.  On Tuesday, we're doing a walking tour, on Wednesday we are going on a bus tour featuring the Jewish areas in 20th Century Dublin, on Friday we are going to a rendition of Molly Bloom's soliloquy in Bewley's Cafe and on the day itself we are going to have a traditional Irish breakfast at the Gresham Hotel (I'm not eating the kidney).  For those of you who haven't read the book (I haven't, Alan has) the guy whose funeral figures prominently was Paddy Dignam (my father's name) of Sandymount (where we are living).  Synchronicity.  I think I will hold off posting next week until Saturday afternoon so I can relate all these activities.