August 5 .... Peak Experience #1 - head up in the clouds.

All right, I had a reprieve.  So we get to Dublin, and I loved Dublin. Crazy, bustling, funky, noisy, old, architecturally totally interesting, there's a castle in the middle of the city - I mean come on! Our holiday was split into three parts: three days in Dublin, 7 days cycling the Connemara region, 3 days in Killarney, and the last night in Dublin, then home. These next few posts are pieces of the adventure...

I have to share that my first peak experience came when I got to the top of the Partry Mountain that we had to cycle up and over on our first day. Holy Cow ... what an amazing feeling. I was communing with nature, I was cycling through a cloud, a real cloud, I was talking to sheep, I was inspiring myself, having biblical moments - maybe I was hallucinating because of the effort required to cycle up a mountain? I don't know. I felt at one with God and the universe a number of times. All along the road we were cycling up, someone had the kind heart to paint how much further there was to go, cheering us on from another time and dimension so it seemed. At the beginning I didn't realize what the painted messages were. Finally at the top of the mountain there was a sign saying I had made it! When I came to that spot I was alone, Honey having cycled on ahead of me. We were a group of 21, all of us in our own head space, challenging ourselves to make it, to not give up, to keep pushing - this despite wind, rain, clouds, a vertical ride rather than a horizontal one! I was alone up there - and it was stupendous. The scene when I crested the mountain totally breathtaking. I cried. I was overwhelmed, feeling like the beauty and grandness of the mountain was going to swallow me up.

And yes, that is a cloud you see just behind me, and yes, it really is that low, or I really am that high :)

That, was peak experience number one.