"Are you all on your own, then?"

The proprietess in Kenmare, an entrance and exit point to the Ring of Kerry, asked me directly, "Are you all on your own, then?" Well, "yes." Usually, the question went unspoken.

Abandoning hope that the sun would come out, I left Glendalough and drove the short thirty miles to Dublin and somehow managed to bring the car into Ranelagh in South Dublin where I'm staying again at Marie MacMahon's. It feels like a month has gone by since I was last in Dublin.

Major accomplishments in Ireland:
I didn't book the first flight home the day the hubcap fell off.
I didn't get killed on the road. Large block-letter roadside signs in every county say something like this: "142 people killed on County Cork roads in the last 4 years." Terribly reassuring.
In addition to my life, I'm returning with all my limbs. Only minor feet blisters, and those are from France.
I've lost no money or important documents; only a ring.
Today, I have the thought that mythic pilgrimages always come with obstacles, otherwise they're not mythic. Perhaps this visit to Ireland has been a mythic pilgrimage of a kind. My car, my lame horse. The rain, rivers to ford. The back country roads, the pathless wood.

Although, I'm not home yet. Ahead of me is the 7:00 drive tomorrow morning to Dublin Airport, where I must face the Avis tribunal. And then, having made it to the airport and having received my rental-car punishment, as long as I don't lose my passport and driver's license, I board Air Canada for points across the Atlantic.