Driving While Irish

Kathy Russo was driving over a bridge that connects North Haven to Sag Harbor in the Hamptons when she saw the flashing lights and the crowd of people. As she approached the commotion she recognized one of the faces. It was her husband, Spalding Gray. "He has hit another low. We talked him down and we all convinced him to go back to the hospital," reported the New York Post's "Page Six," quoting Russo, on Friday, Oct. 4?two days after cops found Gray allegedly contemplating a jump to his death. According to the gossip column, the police were called by a woman who had seen him pacing and leaning off the bridge. "He's done everything he possibly can to try to get better," Russo told the Post. "But depression, combined with the head trauma, and the wrong cocktail of antidepressants, and September 11 have been too much for him." A Sag Harbor police dispatcher told "Page Six" that a jump off the 25-foot-high bridge probably would not have been fatal, that kids have often made that same jump for fun.

Spalding Gray's head trauma was the result of a near-fatal car accident in Ireland in summer 2001. Russo was driving him and some friends home from dinner in a rural area west of Dublin when they were struck by a veterinarian assistant's van. Gray bore the brunt of the accident: nerve damage to a leg, broken hip, fractured skull. He was taken to a local hospital. "Gray remembers the hospital being full of Irishmen who seemed to have been in car accidents," reported the L.A. Times in a June 2002 interview with the 61-year-old writer/actor. In that article, Gray advised vacationers that they should "travel with an American Express Platinum card that pays for you to medevac out of a foreign country if you're injured."

I've wanted to write about the solo 10-day car tour of Ireland I made last November, when I turned 30, but I haven't gotten around to it until now. The Post story took me back, to a mistake that in one hot innocent second could have tragically transformed my life forever. It took me back to those first 20 minutes behind the wheel of the rental car I drove away from Shannon airport, during which I nearly soiled my bluejeans and could very well have lost my life?or took someone else's. (It also reminded me of Matthew Broderick's tragic accident there in 1987 when he swerved into oncoming traffic, taking the lives of a 63-year-old mother and her 30-year-old daughter.) Actually, proud as I am of my consummate driving skills, I've been too embarrassed until now to tell anybody about it.

Driving in Ireland, even for the most seasoned driver, is driving's ultimate master class. Most right-side-of-the-road visitors to the Emerald Isle should stick to the bus and exercise their mortal curiosity only during the complimentary breakfast at the B&B when they try to fathom the seeming incongruity of "blood" and "pudding."

I miss having a car now that I live in Manhattan, because I love to drive. When I was planning my trip, I was as excited about driving in Ireland as I was about seeing the ancient abbeys, graveyards and ruins, the countryside, cliffs and charming villages, and the crumbling, long-abandoned farmhouses and stone fences erected by my forebears.

I finished the paperwork. They tossed me the keys?no warnings, no advice, no "don't do this or that?be especially careful when you?and for the love of God, don't ever?" entreaties?to a thing with the brand name Yaris, a tiny two-door hatchback, bottom of the economy-class barrel, at about a third of the price you'll pay for a Daewoo out of Manhattan. I threw my backpack in the car, got into what in most countries is the passenger seat and put my left hand on the stick shift. Already feeling really, really strange. I adjusted the mirrors, started her up and got ready to pull out onto the left side of the road. Everything was opposite to what it should have been. I was in an amusement-park kiddie car that'd been souped up and set free from its magnetic track.

They're actually going to just let me take this thing out into traffic? I remember thinking. With nothing more than an international driving permit from AAA, which I acquired by merely presenting my New York State license and a $20 bill? What I was most worried about was offending local road etiquette?knowing how quick I am to curse at other drivers in my own country?and not knowing which way to look, instinctually, for oncoming traffic at the "roundabouts." I steeled myself for the honking that would soon ensue, for the incredulous faces aimed at this obvious jackass tourist as he acclimated. All I wanted was to be part of the flow, confident, master of the wheel, just as I am at home. Fat chance, Yank. On the road in metropolitan Ireland, that apostrophe in your name matters about as much as it does when you're telling a bartender in Galway, giddy after the few pints you've had while filling out your postcards, "Gee, my last name is the same as the name of this bar" (the bartender obviously giving a rat's ass: "Here's your stout then, sir").

The first thing you notice is the hair's-width of the roads. When I first start out, on a two-laner, I have a moss-covered stone wall about a foot away on the left shoulder. To my right, traffic whizzes by just as close in the opposite direction. In these conditions, all you can do is squint your eyes a bit and trust that you're going to squeeze through the gap. Then I hit my first roundabout. Egads. I knew you were supposed to yield to traffic to your right, and that you entered the roundabout when you found an opening. Still, the world's all out of whack at this point. I slow to a grandpa's pace, find my gap and negotiate to my turnoff, all in second gear. I didn't know if I'd taken the right turnoff, so I pulled into the first gas station I saw and took my Rand McNally inside to have someone point me toward the Cliffs of Moher. Back on track, I hopped back into the Yaris.

Here's where it got sticky.

I pull up to the road. I'm headed south, so I'm going to make a right. By instinct, even though I know I'll be swinging out into the left lane, I only check for oncoming traffic to my left. The way is clear. I start to let the clutch out and inch forward. I'm this close to cranking the wheel right and lurching onto the roadway when by chance I happen to look to my right and see a car barreling toward me, doing 60, maybe 70, mph.

After the driver's blaring horn Dopplers away, after I'm able to breathe again, after I make sure I haven't shat myself, I continue on my way, this time checking?but carefully?in both directions.

If atheists had something to pray to, I'd have been on my knees on the side of the road, hands clasped, the tears flowing. That's how close I'd come to something horrific. I decided then and there to simply forget what had happened. I was in conscious denial. I wouldn't tell anybody about it. I'd drive extra extra carefully. I'd enjoy the rest of my holiday?alive, in one piece, thankful.

A few days later I was on the Aran Islands, off the west coast. I got a horrible case of food poisoning from some rancid shark broiled in a butter sauce. I can still conjure the taste and smell of it, still get nauseated from the thought. I was the only patron in the only restaurant on the island. Staying for dinner was mistake No. 1. Ordering an exotic fish in the offseason was mistake No. 2. For two days I shivered under a blanket in front of the fireplace in my hostel and watched the owner chainsmoke Silk Cuts and hack his lungs out. I couldn't keep anything down. I was dangerously dehydrated from constant diarrhea. Had stuff coming out of me from both ends. I had the nightsweats. In the back of my mind, I allowed that being stuck on the Arans, horribly ill, was a sort of karmic fallout from my avoiding that fiery wreck.

I'll take food poisoning over head trauma any day. If things had turned out just a little differently, I may have bumped into Spalding Gray up on that bridge. But roadtripping in Europe is worth the risk. Ireland?with its razor-thin roads and overconfident drivers of oversize vehicles?may be the sketchiest destination for this. But I know those rainbow-lit shamrock valleys and sheer crashing rock faces will call me back to again take my life in my hands.