0nly seventeen miles

        Woke up this morning to torrential rain, not the best situation to be in when you are in a tent. Keeping your gear dry is everything. Fortunately, through experience, I have learned the art of packing up in a one man tent while keeping everything dry.  With the tent needing to be dried out, the rain God finally turned off the faucet.  In the early morning hours my Chinese bike alarm went off.  The rain caused the bushes to sag causing the alarm to trigger.  Here I am trapped in my tent with this damn thing going off every few minutes, real entertaining. I had to unscrew it from the bike and remove the battery to shut it up.  

      Once on the road, I weighed my options as to my next stop.  Camping for four days was telling me a hostel would be real nice. Only seventeen miles

before I reached Waterford, nice town so why not stop, see the place, air out the gear and do some laundry.  The hostel I am settled in at is a decent place, nice layout and very close to downtown. With the basics under control, I took in the sites, Viking and Irish history and, of course, stopped in at Waterford Crystal.  With the factory tours over for the day, I plan on doing the first tour at 9:20 tomorrow.   Would not miss that for anything. The crystal is drop dead beautiful.  I dropped a few bucks; Christmas is coming. The stuff is being shipped; carrying glass items on my bike would have been just plain stupid. 

       Tomorrow I follow the coast until I get to a place that looks like a nice place to stay. I can't believe I have covered over three-quarters of the island, hills and all.