Five years ago the parts of my (Rick's) digestive system conspired against me and ruined my dream of biking around Ireland. I never forgave my colon and I never gave up on the dream. In the summer of 2007, I will have my revenge and have the greatest biking adventure of my life.

The planning of the trip itself took nearly a year. I bought books, maps, a book of maps and was satellite scouting the entire country via Google Earth. Before the trees turned color, I had a preliminary route. By Thanksgiving I had a complete route. By Christmas everything was done: route, mileage, participants, days of travel and airfare. By February that last item changed significantly. An $800 increase per ticket. What the fuck? This was not going to fit into the budget nicely. More accurately, this was going to erode the Guinness budget drastically. Quite unacceptable to say the least. And then there was an email for City Girl. She wasn't able to escape from Whitey for 2 weeks and was going to kiddy-loop the island. She checked on flying in with us to Cork and flying out of Shannon. It was still a large sum (even for a rich kid like her). She saw that flying into and out of Shannon was not only affordable, but less than the price I was quoted back in December. After she relayed that info to me I went to work redesigning the route. It took many long nights, and accompanying cases of beer, but when I was done it turned out to be a better route than the original. Did I mention that we now had non-stop flights.

Continue on here.