What's an Iron Donkey? Keep reading and you'll find out...
I started looking into cycling in Ireland last fall after I returned from my cross-country trek. I bought a cycling guide book - Cycle Touring Ireland, by Brendan Walsh, and started wandering through the tours in the book. At about the same time I noticed ads for Iron Donkey in my bike club newsletter, in Adventure Cycling's magazine, and in the League of American Bicyclists publication. Hmmm... self-guided touring in Ireland, sounds interesting. I checked out the Iron Donkey web site, requested a brochure, and started dreaming. Winter was coming, and I was dreaming of my next tour, but I was also working at a new job, so my plans didn't go beyond dreams at that point.
Then winter closed in on me. It was a wet one, and most of my riding was done on a trainer in my dining room. Very boring - so I turned toward trip planning again. The January/February 2003 issue of Adventure Cyclist had an article about a tour in Ireland organized by Iron Donkey. Still looks interesting...
I started seriously perusing the Iron Donkey web site, and I started an email conversation with Tony Boyd - the architect of the Iron Donkey tours. Questions went winging their way to Tony, and the answers quickly flew back to me. One of the things I asked was if I could talk to someone who had done an Iron Donkey tour in the (recent) past. Tony put me in touch with Laura & Richard from Chicago, and we spent a happy hour+ chatting on the phone one cold winter day. They did 3 of Tony's tours last year and absolutely loved both cycling in Ireland and the routes and lodging arranged by Tony. They had Tony carry their gear for part of the trip because they were traveling with some friends who weren't prepared to travel self-contained, but took their gear back for the last week when they were on their own. Still sounded good to me, but it was still a bit early for decisions. I continued to dream though, thinking about a trip to Ireland in the late May timeframe...
March rolled around, and I decided I needed sunshine. Hawaii first, and I moved my Ireland dreams to the end of the summer. September sounded good to me.
Time to make a decision - which Iron Donkey tour should I do? Back and forth, back and forth, decisions, decisions, decisions... I was having trouble making a decision, and for some reason a single week's tour didn't feel right to me. And looking back, I think that was the reason I was having so much trouble deciding which tour to ride - I guess I really wanted to do more than one! I started leaning toward a two-week vacation, but Tony's standard tours are 6 days biking with 7 nights accommodations. I needed extra days for travel time to and from Ireland, and I thought I'd need a travel day between the tours. I sent off another email to Tony telling him which tours interested me, and asking if he could shorten one or both of them so I could fit my trip into two weeks. His response was that he could definitely structure a trip to fit into my time frame. He also told me that I wouldn't need a day to travel between trips - I could bike between locations. Excellent!
The next step was to pick the tours. I sent off another email to Tony with my choices. He responded with a couple of questions - what was my preferred daily mileage range, and what's my attitude about hills. I answered via email, but then decided a real live conversation would be good. We spoke on the phone, exchanged some more information, and then Tony went into planning mode for me. Because I have a long travel day to get to my first biking day, I asked Tony to plan for a non-traveling first day - not non-biking, but I'll be staying at the same place the first two nights so I can do an easy ride without my gear that first day. He emailed an itinerary for my approval, and after I reviewed it I gave him the go ahead for the trip. I sent off a $100 deposit (with the balance due 6 weeks prior to the trip start). Done - I'm definitely going to Ireland!
