Maybe getting a Brazilian before that bike race was not such a good idea. Not even the beer deadened my bum.

I have been mulling over how to best prepare for a two-week, mostly walking tour of Ireland this fall.

 

With just a little mulling, I realized that the answer was as clear as my eyes after a night of overly exuberant imbibing.

 

Start drinking more beer and whiskey.

 

Oh yes, and a little physical conditioning might be in order. I wouldn’t want to end up with lateral epicondylitis (a.k.a. tennis elbow) from tipping all those pints along the path of the bucolic back roads of the storied emerald isle.

 

In a fortuitous convergence where I might benefit from a little exercise and simultaneously intensify my training regime for the consumption of copious quantities of fine Irish ales and whiskeys, I noticed an announcement for a fundraising event, which included a mere one-hour bike ride, but happened to start at one Irish pub and end at another Irish pub.

 

     

 

It sounded to me like a bicycling version of the Hash Hound Harriers, you know, it would be “drinkers with a bicycling problem.”

 

AND…given that this was to be a fundraising event, it should be a tax write-off, as well.

 

That’s what I would call a win – win – win situation (or as Charlie Sheen would just say “winning”).

 

So, as soon as I saw the event flyer, I got online and paid my entry fee, and then eagerly awaited my “Ireland trip training session.”

 

What I did not anticipate was that I would end up scheduling an elective medical procedure before the bike ride that required an inordinate amount of body depilation. (Read on and you’ll figure out what that word means.)

 

All I know is that I went to sleep on a hospital bed with my luxurious coat of resplendent body hair intact, but I awoke a few hours later with a distinct pattern of shearing, which exposed surprisingly smooth, lily-white skin not seen for the last 60 years.

 

I believe the description of the pattern of hair removal is otherwise known as a Brazilian.

 

While under the drunken-like stupor of the so-called conscious sedation medication, I seem to recall my male nurse, Gabriel, hovering over my hinter regions, shaver in hand. I can only hope and pray I do not see myself—or certain portions of myself—on YouTube anytime in the foreseeable future, with emphasis on the seeable.

 

While no one in a million years would ever confuse me with Bradley Wiggins or Mark Cavendish (my hair is darker), I do go out on these bike rides replete in my body conforming spandex.

 

   

 

Having large swaths of certain areas covered by my spandex bike shorts, while I’m sporting two-week old stubble down there, does not make for an enjoyable level of comfort, while my bum skooches side-to-side on the bike saddle, mile-after-mile on a long road course.

 

I’m pretty sure there will be nothing in Ireland involving this type of uncomfortable activity, except maybe when I am skooching the bar stool a little closer to my glorious pint of Guinness and wee dram of Jameson 18 yr.

 

 

   

 

I can only hope my level of training will be up to the task of the glass in hand.

 

Sláinte!