A Million Words

The race village is almost gone, traffic patterns are back to normal, and this morning we once again have an oil boat parked outside. Sadly, the wind turbines came down yesterday, and no, they did not power the entire race village. I happened to run into one of the engineers from the company early in the festival, and he told me that each one generates enough electricity to power about two houses. The two at the end of the harbor were wired up to pump electricity back into the grid, but they were by no means keeping all those race village lights and loudspeakers going. It's really too bad the Galway Harbour Company didn't want to leave them there. Oh well.

Two weeks of festival and sunny weather, crowds all day and drunks all night, are finally drawing to a close. Living in the middle of the Volvo race stopover fairgrounds has had its moments, but I'm glad that it's over. Nova fell asleep every night to the sound high-decibel music, most of which was pretty good. I didn't adapt quite so well, and have been awake past my bedtime every night for fourteen days running. I had intended to blog about the festival as it was happening, but when the time came I couldn't stand to look at it any more than I absolutely had to. I enjoyed some of it, but annoyance won out as often as not. Here's an abbreviated log of the two weeks as seen from our apartment. Arrivals and Opening Ceremony: I didn't get any pictures of the arrival night, but boy, was it a long one. The band played until 11pm, I had settled down to sleep by midnight, and then at 2 AM it started up again as the first boat came across the finish line. I would ...

The Volvo Ocean Race stopover advertises itself as a major event for Galway, but you never would have known it was happening until a two weeks ago when the oil tanks finally came down. I mean, they'd said that was supposed to happen in December.  Now, the ground where the tanks stood has been more-or-less cleaned up and they're starting to set up the race village, and temporary floating docks are being dropped into the water where the racing boats will park: The race people are also setting up a fence around the perimeter of the docks to keep hapless festival-goers from tumbling into the cleaner-than-usual water.  From my angle, the best thing about these fences is that they're a sign that we won't see the scrap-metal barges for a good few weeks. So, although I'm sure there'll be plenty of race-related noise at least it will be replacing, rather than adding to, the usual things that wake me up at 5 AM.   I doubt, however, that these will prevent any determined s...

Breaking news from Galway Harbor:  the oil tanks have been leveled.  Here are a couple of pictures from yesterday and today:   Now we can see the little fringe of green at the back of the parking lot, the area which is supposed to house the race village for the big Volvo Ocean Race hooha which is coming to town in a few weeks.  Looks like there's still a lot of rubble to clear.

This past Monday, June 9th, about twenty fishing boats lined up to blockade Galway Harbor in protest.  I was not 100% clear on what they were protesting, but one thing they wanted was for the government to stop taxing gasoline.  Here are some pictures from the day: Many of the fishermen are still here, flying banners which say: "Save Our Livelihoods" "Brussles Betray, Costal Communities Decay" "Third World starves while Ireland forced to dump dead fish" "Fishermen demand fair and effective laws" etc. Most of these signs are spray-painted onto sheets, and are accompanied by big placards from Sinn Fein urging people to vote against the Lisbon treaty.   Watching all those boats line up to blockade the harbor was a good morning's entertainment, but I find myself strangely unsympathetic to the fishermen's plight.  I don't really know the issues very well, but it seems to me that the fundamental problem is that a century of industrial ...