Croagh Patrick - The Holy Mountain

Shivering not from the cold, he'd had enough. The eejit pilgrims climb this bloody thing barefoot and, formerly, in the dark. But Joe won't budge. He is as certain as rain in Ireland that he'll fall to his doom to join his dead ancesters to lie among the stones and the peat that surround Clew Bay.

It's not that he was tired nor unfit. The path was clearly marked. It's just that the devil put these steep fields of stones, slipperly on a damp, windy and foggy day, and as well lubricated as the resident drunk in every pub. Joe is too tall, too unbalanced. His backpack is overweighted, his strained achilles is too unsettling and his ASICS 2110 plimsoles were not designed for a mountain goats gait.

So he sat down and told Gerlinde he was not going any further up (nor down for that matter). She kept going up without him. The witch. He's still not going to budge. Like our new friend Sean, who sat himself beside us at the pub one night, looking like a wild William Shakespeare and stinking like there are no showers in Mayo. Who needs them when it rains so often? His coherence was as variable as the weather, a Guinness man Sean is, like nearly all good men. Gerlinde could not understand a word Sean said, him being so soft spoken with a full brogue. Joe could understand more, being a near native like.

Well Sean would not budge either and it was grand except for the stink. He said hello to all the pub regulars who walked bye and they all smiled at him and said "Hello Sean". Sean kept shaking our hands and calling us friend and we were. He kept cajolling the musicians to play some Irish rebel music, but they were playing Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt and a bit of American country. Well played like every pub we ventured into in Westport.

It hit midnight and we got up to leave the pub, saying "Goodnight Sean". Sean lept up from his seat from which he would not budge, went out the door quick as lightening and up the hill. So himself, Joe, pulled a Sean on Croagh Patrick, stood up and went up the mountain after his wife, shame overcoming fear.

Why not he thought? If the mountain doesn't kill him, the driving here will. He'd rather die on the holy mountain of Ireland where Saint Patrick himself banished the snakes than expire in a hire car. Or perhaps he will just lose a leg, like the lamb that left his leg in a fence down the lane from our cottage. Dear Saint Patrick, he prayed, if I lose a leg make it be the troubled one and don't damage anything further up. I've no plans for the priesthood. Oh and Saint Patrick, leave me arms strong for the wheelchair marathon.

Joe was wearing his heart rate monitor, the only eejit in history to wear a heart rate monitor climbing Croagh Patrick. He was concerned that the fairies might choose to do mischief to his heart rate monitor, being that it was a new device for them to mess with. But the fairies left his heart rate monitor alone and chose instead to mess with the Continental check-in desk computers at Dublin Airport just as Joe got to the front of the queue. Fortunately, fairies are not persistent and the IT help swooped in and cleaned out the fairies from the system.

Joe's heart rate monitor hit lactate threshold territory at 160 plus in those last steep parts up the holy mountain. The two hour climb of Croagh Patrick was completed safely with an average heart rate of 121. A good workout that left lots of caloric room for Guinness.