March 2009

March = Gardening
I'm afraid we were pretty boring last month and just got totally stuck into the gardening, so no exciting travel tales or scenic landscape photos in this month's blog. Just photos of plants and flowers, so if you don't like plants you better just go away now.

I've posted a couple of longer essays about the experience of moving to Ireland - you can find them listed in the sidebar below the photos. One of the essays is the story of how we came to move to County Clare despite being very settled and content in Ithaca NY. The other is about the trials and tribulations of trying to get an Irish driving license.


I always wanted a real cottage garden.


We have been starting thousands of veg and flower seedlings in the new polytunnel, and are digging new garden beds as fast as we can.



Awesome Shrubbery
I was never a big fan of shrubbery back in America. It seemed to me that only a select few shrubs hardy to upstate NY offer a serious "wow!" factor. But I'm a convert to shrubbery now - there are so many amazing shrubs in Irish gardens, many of them imported exotics from Asia, Australia and New Zealand, that truly pack a floriferous punch.

(I can't write "shrubbery" without thinking of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. If you're a fan you know what I'm talking about. Nee!)

I'm especially fond of the winter and early spring flowering shrubs, when nothing is in bloom except the spring bulbs. The bees like them, too.

Like this Darwin's Barberry (Berberis darwinii). When you first see the small orange blossoms covering the evergreen shrub they look just like fall berries.



This is Flowering Currant (Ribes) - I like the way the homeowners painted the wall to match the blossoms.


Alternative Energy in Ireland
The Irish gov't has been offering rebates and tax incentives for home solar and wind power, and our farmer friends Chris and Hilary got in on it. They live on a high, open hill, perfect for windpower, and also have a few solar panels and a generator for backup.

Chris and Hilary need a lot of water for their three polytunnels and glasshouse, so they put in a super water collection system on all of their roofs when they realized the water pump was the biggest electrical draw. As a result they were able to get by with quite a small power system. (There's a very large water tank just out of sight on the right side of the shed, and the blue barrels are linked together for overflow capacity.)

Ever resourceful, Chris and Hilary built this large glasshouse completely out of salvaged windows. Hilary said she measured each window then figured out the layout of each greenhouse wall using graph paper and a lot of pencil eraser!


Landscape Gardening
A woman hired us to do a bunch of work while her husband was away. He's getting older and wants to do things himself, but never seems to get to them. (I'm not talking about little odd jobs - she showed us a garage that she turned into a sitting room while he was away for two weeks!)

We put in a brick path on a slippery slope.......


.....and we turned two other hard-to-mow grass slopes into gardens planted with groundcover shrubs.


Here is a photo series of a big patio job that we did over the winter. The area had been a children's play area next to the house, but now that the child is 10 the family no longer needs the swingset and sandbox area and decided a patio would be a nice addition to their garden.

First we excavated and moved several tons of gravel as a base.


Then Bill laid the paving stones.


I was the 'mudhog' for this job, keeping Bill constantly supplied with fresh mortar.


We built three large raised planters with reclaimed bricks.


Filling the planters with soil.


This spring we planted shrubs and perennials in the brick planters.




I won't even go into state of the Irish economy in this blog. If you've been watching the news you know Ireland went from rags to riches during the Celtic Tiger years, and is now back to rags. Home food gardening, predictably, is on the increase, and I have a couple of job possibilities that are related to educating people about veg gardening, similar to the work I was doing with Cooperative Extension in Tioga County 5 years ago. Stay tuned!!

How we ended up moving to Ireland

This is the story of our move from Ithaca NY, a place I love very much (and for which I still pine on the harder days), to a rustic thatched cottage in the hills of County Clare, Ireland. I feel like I'm married to America and having a fling with Ireland.

Bill and I, both in our mid-40's, thought we had finally settled down. We were living in a beautiful passive solar house near Ithaca that we built ourselves, surrounded by a huge vegetable garden, fruit trees, and gorgeous flower gardens. We had worked hard for years, building and gardening, to create our own little paradise. We were both fortunate to have steady, fulfilling work that paid the bills and a great social life in beautiful Ithaca, a progressive university town with a rich offering of artistic and academic culture.

We left a lovely, handbuilt home...


with an attached greenhouse...


and beautiful gardens...



...in the hills of upstate New York.



We left behind our fun and crazy friends....



...and family






2004: A ten-day holiday in County Clare
Then in 2004 everything changed. I found out I was eligible for Irish citizenship by descent, an unusually liberal policy that means anyone with at least one grandparent born in Ireland can apply for citizenship. I found this out around the same time that we were feeling utterly disgusted with the way the Bush administration had used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq, and apprehensive about the upcoming election, in which Bush had a good chance of getting re-elected. With Irish citizenship, it might be possible to get away from American policies for a while and experience life in another country. This was an intriguing idea, but still a remote fantasy since neither of us had ever been to Ireland and didn't have a clue as to what it was really like. I held contradicting images in my mind of green, green hills and IRA bombers.

We came to Ireland for the first time for a 10 day vacation in spring of 2004, with our 18 year old daughter. Monica was just about to finish high school, so the trip was a long-promised graduation gift to her as well as a chance to to check out Ireland as a possible place to live. We had a fantastic time - to say we loved our time in County Clare would be an understatement. What I felt more than anything was a sense of recognition and familiarity, as if I were traveling through a landscape I had visited many times in my dreams. I saw so many facets of my personality reflected in the people we met - the easy way I talk to strangers, my love for music, an awe for the wild power of nature. It was as if the last few pieces of my jigsaw puzzle had always been missing and now they had finally fallen into place. I know it sounds like the usual cheesy romantic goop that is spouted by everyone who comes to Ireland in search of their roots, but in my case the powerful sense of identification was strong enough that just seeing Ireland on one holiday wasn't enough. It was as if I was under a spell, and after our trip I could think of nothing else but returning to Ireland to experience more of this feeling.

Images from our first trip to Ireland. We were hooked.







2005: 10 months WWOOFING in the west of Ireland
However, I wasn't quite ready to chuck everything and move to Ireland just yet. It would have been easier when we were still in our early 20's and not so settled down. I recognized that the symptoms of infatuation might be temporary, so we looked into ways to travel around Ireland cheaply for a good long time, and still keep our house and jobs in the United States. Finally we found the answer through WWOOF, World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. This organization facilitates an exchange program between organic farmers who need help and people who want to learn about farming while traveling around. The volunteers, called “wwoofers”, work for a pre-arranged number of hours per week on the farms in exchange for meals and a place to stay. By wwoofing in Ireland, we were able to travel cheaply, see a fair bit of the country, and meet others with like-minded interests in organic farming and gardening.


We made all the necessary arrangements to leave our old lives behind for a year and started wwoofing in the west of Ireland in January 2005. We spent 10 months wwoofing in Counties Cork, Kerry, Clare, Limerick, Clare and Galway, staying with 12 different families overall. Many of our wwoof hosts were not professional farmers, rather they were small-holders with large vegetable gardens and some animals, trying to be more self-sufficient.

Wwoofing was challenging in the beginning. Missing our home, friends and pets, combined with a few challenging farm situations almost had me on the plane back to America before the first few months had passed. I kept a journal throughout the year, and set up a blog that was read by hundreds of Americans, friends, families and co-workers, back home.

After a rough experience with our second wwoof hosts we thought about giving up but decided to give wwoofing one more try before returning to the United States in defeat. Fortunately our next hosts were two of the sweetest people in the world. I would have adopted them as my grandparents and stayed forever but sadly we had to move on when our two weeks were up. After that point our wwoofing experiences were mostly positive, but more importantly I found I had developed a much better tolerance to the few hosts that were a bit prickly to live with. I no longer missed our home in Ithaca so much, and I found that I really enjoyed packing up and moving along every two weeks with no clue about what was in store for us at the next farm. At each home we spent lots of our free time cycling, walking, and exploring the surrounding area, so that by the end of 10 months we had probably seen more of western Ireland's hidden nooks and crannies than most Irish.

We stayed in all manner of accommodation.





And we did all kinds of work.





Once we got into County Clare and started wwoofing around Ennis we hit a lucky streak. Some call it “trail magic”, those serendipitous situations that happen when you throw your fate to the winds. It was summertime, holiday time, and we met a group of people who were looking for trustworthy house and pet minders while they were away. We were essentially homeless, very flexible, and delighted to stay for a week or two in one beautiful home after another – an architect's bright, spacious house surrounded by gorgeous, exotic gardens; a seaside cottage overlooking the Aran Islands; a lovely house in the town center of Ennis, with an easy walk to the pubs for traditional music. Once we had use of a homeowner lovely Audi, a novelty for us since we had been getting around Ireland strictly by bike and bus. As I drove into town (on the wrong side of the road), the Talking Heads song, “Letting the Days Go By” played in my head:

And you may find yourself living in a beautiful house,
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile.
And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”

We cycled everywhere.....



...climbed a lot of mountains....



visited oodles of castles.....




and ogled the sexy summer wildflowers.







As I settled into the rhythms of traveling and wwoofing I experienced more freedom than I had at any other time in my life. This was like being a teenager, but without the angst – we were only working part-time at something we both love, we had no bills to pay, no parental responsibilities, no car repairs, no job hassles. We did have wwoof hosts that, like parents, could sometimes be nice and other times be mean and repressive. But at least we could leave home and get a new set of “parents” every couple of weeks. I had become so unattached to our old routines that I felt reluctant to return to our settled lives in America. I fantasized about fixing up a camper van and driving around the rest of Europe and beyond, getting by as wwoofers and migrant farm laborers. But reality set in when we ran out of money, so we returned to our house and jobs in the United States before going too deeply into debt.

There is a common insect that lives in the still waters of ponds and swamps in America. The water strider glides around on the surface tension of the water, like an ice skater. Down in the southern states they call them “Jesus bugs” because they appear to be walking on the water. The water striders glide around eating tiny insects that either land on the water or come up to the surface from below, so they literally have the best of both worlds, water and air.

Being a water strider is what wwoofing felt like after a while. I could see down into the water where people were living their settled lives – content and comfortably trapped by jobs, mortgages, and raising children. With our grown daughter living in California, parents who were aging but still healthy, and no debt (other than our mortgage), we had an open window in our lives and we seized the opportunity to dive through it. We temporarily broke free of the chains that had tied us for so long, and were fortunate to spend almost a year skating above the surface of normal life.



2006-2007:Back in America
We returned to America in the late fall of 2005, determined to save enough money to return to Ireland and try living a “real life” rather than just wwoofing. During the two years we were living in America we made three changes to our lives, inspired by our journey,. First, I finally learned to play an instrument. When we were wwoofing I was asked again and again if I played. In fact, I was asked many more times what instrument I played than what I did for a living, which is usually one of the first questions people ask in America. Musical talent is so common in Ireland that admitting that you can't play an instrument is like confessing you don't know how to read. I was not going to return to Ireland until I could play something, so I set about learning to play the banjo, choosing to learn the Apalachian old-timey style rather than Irish traditional music.


Second, we started our own “box scheme” for selling vegetables. This scheme was inspired by one of the Irish farms we wwoofed on that operated a vegetable delivery service. We had already been growing lots of veg for our own use, so we just ramped up the amount we normally planted and made customized deliveries to friends and co-workers. It was a good experience and we plan to start the same kind of veg delivery service here in Ireland when we develop more garden space.



Lastly, since the veg delivery business meant we had a lot more garden to manage plus full-time jobs on the side, we opened our home to wwoofers. It was an interesting experience to have the shoe on the other foot and host people who came with little or no farming skills. As former wwoofers, we understood what it was like to live in a stranger's home, and so did everything we could to provide a comfortable home for our wwoofers while establishing a work arrangement that was flexible and fair to everybody.

Lindsay and Will, our wwoofers from London

When we felt financially and emotionally ready to make a more permanent move to Ireland,there was no doubt about where we wanted to settle. We had made our best connections and had the best traveler's luck in Ennis, County Clare, and Clare had everything we were looking for: the rugged Atlantic coastline; the botanical wonders and weird moonscapes of the Burren; the wooded hills and lakes of east Clare, so reminiscent of the landforms of our Fingerlakes region in upstate New York; and the perfect size of the market town, Ennis – large enough to have a performing arts center and a lively, diverse culture, but small enough to have beauty and nature close at hand and a sense of community.

2008-Present:Living in County Clare
After two years of saving money and making plans, we moved to County Clare in February 2008. When we were wwoofing it seemed like life would be much easier in Ireland once I got citizenship, so we could have our own house, paying jobs, and our pets from America living with us. Of course reality is always more challenging and interesting than fantasy, and our first year in Ballynacally has been filled with the best and worst of times. We came here without jobs or a house lined up, trusting that our Ennis luck and connections would carry us through once again. We managed to find an unique thatched cottage for rent and enough gardening and landscaping work to barely keep our heads above water this year. And believe me, since 2008 was the wettest summer on record it wasn't always easy to keep one's head above water.



We struggled through the bureaucracy and red tape of bringing our two dogs over from Ireland. The younger dog had just gone blind from a rare hormonal disease and the older one was diagnosed with a fatal liver tumor. When they finally joined us in Ireland we had to adjust to life with a blind dog who was learning her way around a new home, and an older dog in failing health.



We blundered through the hoops involved in opening a bank account (harder than we thought) finding paying work, learning to drive on the left and getting an Irish driving license (much harder than we thought - one year after moving here I still don't have one!).

We made beautiful vegetable and flower gardens, for ourselves and for others.








And always the biggest challenge of moving anywhere new, working at making friends and establishing a sense of connection with people. Without children in school or a network of co-workers, we had to make a real effort to meet new friends. We were lucky to already know some of the organic farmers and gardeners, and we found that music is a great common denominator for the type of people that we like to hang out with.

After almost a year of living in Ireland I am finally starting to feel settled in. We have a small number of people we can call friends now, both Irish and ex-pats. Many of these ex-pats also moved here because they felt enchanted by Ireland's natural beauty and relaxed pace of life. The Irish, having grown up with a constant eyeful of the gorgeous views, seem to think we are all barking mad for moving to this wet and chilly little island. Yet for all the griping about the weather, look who's still here? With EU membership, the Irish can live and work any number of European countries, including many that are much warmer and drier than Ireland. Yet the ones who stayed, and whose ancestors stayed through all the hard times, must sense, deep down, that Ireland is a sacred place with powerful energy.

Over the last year I've given a lot of thought to what it means to be a voluntary immigrant – not one who was forced to emigrate to find work or flee from a war-torn or impoverished country, but those of us who chose to move elsewhere for less concrete reasons. A desire for adventure, to learn a new language, or just to reap the richness of experience that comes with facing new challenges each day. I've thought about how much easier it is for us modern-day immigrants – we now have instantaneous communication with our loved ones back home via emails, blogs and global calling cards, compared to the months-long passage of letters written emigrants like my grandparents. EU immigrants like the Polish and Czechs now working in Ireland can now on Ryanair flights for less than 50 euros to visit their friends and families back home. (I'm fervently hoping that Micheal O'Leary follows through on his promise to start low-cost transatlantic flights starting in 2010. Then my periodic bouts of intense homesickness could be alleviated by short breaks to Ithaca, and more of our friends and family could afford to visit us as well.)



Why is it that some humans are so content to live out their entire lives where they were born and raised, and others are only happy when they are on the move? Is there some kind of a genetic predisposition, a traveler's gene? Am I the product of a footloose father and a mother who says coming home is one of the best part about traveling? I've always had an inner struggle between the half of me that wants to dig in my roots and the other half that wants to keep experiencing new living situations. This lyric from the Grateful Dead song “Truckin'” sums it up for me:

Get tired of hanging around, you gotta travel,
Get tired of traveling, you want to settle down....

In nature, seeds are dispersed in a variety of ways to ensure the successful reproduction of the species. Some seeds fall to the ground around the parent plant, where the soil and conditions have already proven themselves reliable for that type of plant. But competition from the parent plant and sibling seedlings could also spell disaster for the fallen seeds. Other seeds are sent far and wide, either on the wind, within fruits and nuts consumed by animals, or as hitchhikers on animal fur and feathers. These seeds take the chance that they'll end up in fertile soil elsewhere, and enough light and water to germinate and thrive. Sometimes a seed lands in a place that is similar to the environment where the parent plant grew,, but different enough that the new plant gradually evolves and adapts to the new environment, the same and yet also subtly changed. Change, mutation and evolution are essential for long term success of any species.


And how have I changed, mutated, evolved through this process? Wwoofing was fantastic for showing me how to take life one day at a time and not try to plan the future so much. It was comical how often our best laid plans fell through but were always replaced by something as good or better. I had always been a planner and organizer, but wwoofing taught me the value of just letting go with whatever happens. I've also learned to get by with a lot less possessions. For almost a year we lived out of our backpacks, and when we returned to America I was shocked at how much stuff we still had in our house and promptly got rid of about half of it.

We moved back to Ireland with just a few suitcases of essentials (gardening tools, cookware, musical instruments, art supplies, bicycles) and at that time we thought we would have more of our possessions shipped to Ireland. Our rented house came furnished, and after we bought what we needed at charity shops and discount stores realize we can live without most of of that stuff. We are able to live quite frugally, despite Ireland's reputation as an expensive country, and instead use our wealth of time to travel as much as we can around this beautiful island and to the rest of Europe.

Life is more interesting on the edge!

I believe our story of emigrating to Ireland is fairly unique. We come from a country that people generally move to, not from, and most Americans will never have the opportunity to live overseas. Until I experienced it myself, it was very difficult to truly understand what it is like to be an immigrant. To really love two different places is to always feel torn in two to some degree, but this experience is also teaching me the art of being happy, where ever I am.

The 2nd hardest thing about moving to Ireland.......

.....has been getting a driver's license. We have lived here for 13 months, and despite massive efforts at getting a license (I've taken three driving tests and spent 250 euros so far) I am still driving around with the stupid red "L" stickers (for "Learner" but now it feels more like "Loser")on the front and back windows of the car.


Here's the entire, embarrassing story:
February 2008
We arrive in Ennis and buy a second-hand car within the first few weeks. When negotiating for our VW Polo we ask the car dealer about how much he thinks insurance will be and he says he pays 400 euros a year. We buy the car and take the receipt into town to buy insurance. The first place we go to gives us a quote of over 2,000/year. We freak out and say we'll try somewhere else. The second place says 2,500/year. The third place won't even consider insuring us because we are Americans.

I should mention here that Bill and I have both been driving for decades, and except for some old speeding tickets of mine from back when I was a leadfoot, and a wipeout on black ice, we both have good driving records.

The US does not have a reciprocal agreement with Ireland regarding driving. Residents of some other countries, including most of the EU and Japan, can just come here and drive on their own licenses forever, while we are only supposed to use the US license for one year. As far as the Irish insurance companies are concerned we are just like 17 year old kids driving for the first time.

We go back to the first place which gave us the quote of 2,000 a year and suck it up. The agent says that the sooner we can get an Irish license the better, because the premium will immediately drop. We foolishly assume this can be accomplished in a few months.
Our little VW Polo. The first year of insurance cost almost as much as the car!

March 2008
We prepare to take the Driving Theory Test. Similar to the written test for a NY license but much more thorough. Plus, some of the rules of the road are different, and of course everything is in metric so we have to memorize speed limits and stopping distances in kilometers/hour and meters per second. There are a number of questions regarding farm machinery since the license covers tractor drivers, and you also have to show knowledge of basic car maintenance. The test is 60 questions and you can only get 5 or fewer wrong to pass.

We find a teen center that has simulated theory tests on computers where we can go to practice, even though we are not teens. (I guess as far as the insurance companies are concerned we are, and that's good enough for the folks at the teen center.) By taking the simulated tests over and over again, we eventually see all of the possible questions and just memorize as many answers as we can (fortunately it's multiple choice).
Our study guide for the theory test

April 2008
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the waiting times for each step in getting the holy license are s-l-o-w. You call to schedule, then weeks go by until you finally get a letter with your test date, many more weeks hence.

So finally our theory test dates come up in April. We go to the address in the confirmation letter - there's no DMV so it's at a local hotel. Turns out the test is administered in a small bus waiting out in the parking lot. The bus drives around to different towns giving the theory test, and it's equipped with a waiting room, two computers on which to take the test, and a small area where the employee gives you your results and gives you feedback on what you got wrong.

Success! All the cramming at the teen center pays off! I just squeak by, getting the maximum number wrong (5), while Bill gets 4 wrong.
Cost: 36 euros each

Next came some completely unexpected costs. We passed the theory test, but when reading the fine print on our passing certificates we see that we still have to send in application form (Cost: 15 euros each), results of an eye exam, given by a licensed opthalmologist (Cost: 30 euros each), and two passport photos (Cost: 10 euros each).

May 2008
We try to schedule our driving tests and find out that new legislation, enacted just a few months before, says that new drivers must wait at least 6 months after getting their first provisional license (learner's permit) before scheduling a driving test. Nothing to do but wait until 6 months have passed and practice driving on the left side of roads (some of which are too narrow to really have a left side or right side anyway, so everyone more or less drives down the center anyway until forced up against the stone walls by oncoming cars).

September 2008
Everyone we know has been telling us their horror stories about failing the driving test. There is a one-third failure rate across the country, and there are a lot of Irish who've just given up and are still driving on provisional licenses that have expired. (The gov't says it's cracking down on these drivers now, but from what we've seen there is very little law enforcement out on the roads.)

One of the common reasons for failure is the part of the test that involves backing around a corner in a busy residential area, something you would never, ever do in real life when there are so many driveways where you can turn around more safely. Also, if the car touches the curb during this or any other part of the test it's an automatic failure.

You also have to answer some oral questions at the beginning of the test about speed limits and stopping distances, again involving metric measurement. The tester also points to a chart of road signs and asks you to give the meanings. Roadsigns are completely graphic here, due to some EU regs about signage that can be understood without knowing the language. Some of these signs are pretty hard to figure out, and of course these are the ones they like to show you for the oral part of the exam.

One of the signs I have been asked to identify at all three driving tests, and I am not making this up, is a completely white, blank circle. I have never actually seen one of these signs in real life (it would probably lend itself to immediate vandalism, that blank circle just begging for graffiti) but according to our study guide it means "Pedestrianized Street", like the Ithaca Commons. I don't think a blank circle is the best way to get this message across. Wouldn't it be more effective if the sign had a picture of a car driving down a pedestrianized street with little stick figures running away and flying through the air?
They asked me to identify this sign every time I took the test

The other one they like to ask shows a windsock blowing in the wind. The first time I answered "An airport nearby? Watch out for low aircraft?" but it turns out to be a warning for crosswinds. (I can see how wind would be a hard concept to get across graphically.)

Everyone says to take a driving lesson before we take the test, so we each sign up for a driving lesson. To get the most out of it, Bill tags along in the back seat for my lesson and I go along for his, so we can hear as much advice as possible. Cost: 40 euros each.

The instructor is great. She gives us little tips like: "Back into the parking space when you first arrive for the test so that you are pulling out forward at the beginning, when you're likely to be nervous." She also runs us through the second part of the test, after the oral part, which involves opening the hood and answering questions about car maintenance, like how to check and fill the oil, add water to the radiators, etc.

Before we start the driving lesson she shows us what the test sheet looks like - it looks like an SAT exam, with three different categories of faults for each heading (Observation, Signalling, Speed, Reversing, etc): Grade 1 (minor faults), Grade 2 (more serious), and the dreaded Grade 3 (very hazardous, the test is immediately over). You can get an unlimited number of Grade 1 faults, and up to nine Grade 2 faults overall. However, you can also fail if you get four Grade 2 faults under any one category.

The instructor then takes us on the actual test course in the town of Ennis and through the outlying suburbs, giving us verbal feedback and also written comments on how we can each improve. We've both gotten lazy over the years about using our mirrors, and the testers are stringent about "mirror-signal-mirror-manouvre". If you were to forget looking in your mirror at four required times during the 40 minute driving test, that would be considered four Grade 2 faults in the observation category, meaning failure. This is one reason it's so hard to pass the test here - you can fail for making multiple but relatively minor mistakes.

The other things on the test are hand signals (different ones depending on whether you're signalling to someone in front of you or behind you), a hillstart using the handbrake, and a three point turn.

The main comment the instructor has for me is to slow down. She says I am much too zippy and need to stay in third gear in the town and second gear around the roundabouts, of which there are many. "Where ye a rally driver in America?" she asks repeatedly.

Over the next few weeks before our test dates, we both practice using our mirrors obsessively and I try to slow down a bit.

October 2008
Bill's test is scheduled first. Bill is one of the most conservative drivers I know. He never tailgates, speeds and always brakes gently and early. I used to tease him that he drives like a grandma, so I have every confidence that he'll pass. Yet when he returns to the test center waiting room he gives me the thumbs down. When we are alone in the car I can see that he is angry, and he shows me his test result: the instructor gave him four Grade 2 faults in the category of Maintaining Correct Speed. She felt he was driving too slowly and in too low a gear (3rd gear in town and a bit less than the posted speed limit, as instructed by our driving teacher.)

The tester gave him feedback after showing him the results and said he should have been in 4th gear and exactly at the speed limit of 30 mph. However, we were told that if you go over the speed limit it's considered a Grade 3 fault and automatic failure. Try this next time you're driving: stay at exactly 30 miles per hour while driving through a busy town. And remember to look in your mirrors every 10 seconds while doing it.

My test is a week later. OK, I tell myself. Don't drive too fast. And don't drive too slow. Mirror-signal, mirror-signal, mirror-mirror-mirror. Fortunately Bill clued me in on which road signs he was asked about for the oral part of his test, so the tester looks surprised when I confidently sing out "Pedestrianized Street!" when he points to the blank white circle. I also sail through the part where we look under the hood and I identify engine parts.

We get in the car. The tester holds a handheld computer in his hand. Everytime he marks you wrong on something you can hear an audible click. It's totally nervewracking because every time I hear it I'm trying to figure out what I just did wrong, instead of focusing on what I'm doing. Click. Oh shit. Click. Oh shit.

I think I'm doing alright, and finally we come to the anxiety-producing Reverse Around the Corner. It's in a busy housing estate with cars going by every minute or so. Bill and I had gone to this exact corner in evenings (no-one's allowed to practice on the route during testing hours) to perfect this manouvre.Like I said, it's automatic failure if you hit the curb, but you also have to end up within one foot of the curb at the end. And check mirrors and through the back window constantly.

I am halfway through the reverse, right at the corner with the front end of the car sticking into the main road into the housing estate, when another car comes along the road. I make eye contact with the other driver, and since my car is sticking into the road and blocking his way I then continue the reverse. After I complete the reverse turn I am pleased to see that I am within the required distance from the curb. So why did I just hear a click from the tester's hand held thingie?

We continue on with the rest of the test and finally return to the test center. The guy disappears into a little room to attach his hand-held device to their computer to print out my test results. I'm sitting there feeling pretty confident when he returns to the waiting room and tells me, "I'm afraid it's not very good news." (This must what they're taught to say in the Break It To Them Gently part of their training.) He then shows me my results: I have a fatal Grade 3 fault in the Reversing category, which means automatic failure.
My 1st driving test results: a fatal grade 3 fault in reversing

The tester explains that when I saw the other vehicle, I should have stopped immediately and not proceeded on until his car was no longer in the vicinity. Despite the fact that I was blocking his way. It would have been a stand-off, until eventually the other guy would either have to drive on the sidewalk or turn around and leave.

Why didn't he tell me right away when it happened? I'm guessing they don't want to be stuck in a car with an upset person who's just failed the test. And who might, deliberately or not, drive very poorly back to the center.

The tester also gives me feedback that I was driving too fast. I was trying to keep it right around 30 mph, the speed limit in town, and going in third gear around the roundabouts, based on the feedback from Bill's first failed test. I had a different tester, so this goes to show you how subjective the whole process is. One tester wants you to drive right at the speed limit, and another doesn't feel comfortable with that.
Cost: 38 euros each

We immediately schedule new driving tests for November.

Just to add insult to injury, about 3 weeks after we failed our tests we each received a lovely red certificate of failure, suitable for framing.


November 2008
Bill's test comes up first again. This time he passes with flying colors, even though he was so nervous that he felt he drove worse than the first time around. He has hardly any faults marked on his sheet.

A week later it's my turn. I get the same tester that Bill had the first time, the one that said he was too slow. So I try to keep my speed up, but it's mid-day on a Friday in Ennis, a very busy shopping day with lots of car doors opening and pedestrians crossing the road. She gives me four Grade 2 faults for driving too slowly (between 25 and 30 mph) and in third gear instead of fourth. My report looks almost identical to Bill's first failed test with the same tester. I mentioned earlier that I'm a bit of a leadfoot, so it's completely ludicrous that she fails me for driving slowly and cautiously. Cost: 38 euros each
My 2nd driving test results: too many grade 2 faults, in particular for driving at a low speed (25 mph in a 30 mph zone) and using 3rd gear instead of 4th!

I reschedule another test for January. The Road Safety Authority kindly sends me another lovely certificate.


January 2009
My test is scheduled for 9 am, and I'm so nervous this time that I barely sleep the night before. I'm really confused at this point about how fast or slow I should be driving for the test. This time my test is at the other test center in Ennis, since I've already been failed by both testers at the other place. They have a policy not to give you the same tester who's failed you already, but to be honest I would have preferred that because at least then I would know what they're looking for.

We start the test. I am really nervous and sleep-deprived. I don't know these roads at all and wonder if I should have taken another lesson on this test course. Five minutes into it the tester suddenly says, "Stop the car! Pull over!" There's nowhere safe to do so and I drive on looking for a safe place to pull over, while asking what's wrong. The tester is clearly agitated."My seat is off the rails! My seat's not attached to the car!"

I pull into a driveway and he jumps out of the car. He opens the back door and is fishing around for the seat belt, which is trapped behind the seat because we usually have the seats folded down to make way for landscaping tools. Meanwhile, I'm out of the car and on my hands and knees next to the passenger seat in total disbelief. "What? How? No way - we've had this car for a year and never had a problem with the seat before! I share this car with my husband and we adjust this seat all the time! I bet I can fix it in a jiffy - oh look, here's where the bolt fell out! If I fix it now can we continue the test? It takes a while to schedule another one and I really want to pass it today."

I remember back to the beginning of the test, when the tester got into the passenger seat and roughly pushed the seat back as far as it would go. They do this so they can observe you more easily, and I have a feeling he pushed the seat right off the rails then.

"The test is over! Take me back to the test center now! Where is the seat belt? This car is required to have seat belts - please take me back now!" I locate the seat belt for him and we head back to the test center. I'm completely rattled, as is he, and when he shouts out "Turn left here!" as I speed past the road to the center, I have to admit that I took it kind of fast, so forget about that man ever setting foot into my car again.

Bill looks stunned when I return to the test center after just 10 minutes. I am on the verge of tears and the tester kisses the carpet with relief when we got inside, so Bill can tell something went very wrong. The tester filled out a form called Denial of Test which entitle me to a free re-test. Cost: 38 euros

Sure enough, we find a little bolt under the seat that is broken in two. It only takes a few minutes to fix the seat.

February 2009
Our initial car insurance policy is up for renewal, so I go to the insurance office with Bill's full driving licence. I get a new quote: 750/year, or a bit more than a third of what we were paying in '08. Woohoo!!

"How much will more will it go down when I get my license?" I ask the insurance agent, without telling him I've already failed twice and been "denied" once. He says it won't really go down much more. Hmmm...is there any point to me taking the test again? Then I remember that I am only supposed to drive on the US license for a year, so I really have to get an Irish license ASAP.

I start to schedule another driving test, then realize that our NCT is going to expire before I can get another shot at the driving test. (NCT = National Car Test. Yes, even the car has to take a test here.) The NCT is similar to inspection but more like California's than New York. They are very strict about emmissions and it's usually the failure for most older vehicles.As of this writing in early April, we have put some money into car repairs but it still failed, so back to the mechanic it goes. When the car finally passes it's test, I can finally schedule another driving test! Yippee!

Total cost for not yet having a license: 245 euros

Oh yeah, the hardest thing about moving to Ireland? For me, it's been missing everyone from home.