The idea of the trip began in The Harp and Wheel, a pub with a sticky floor, cloudy windows, and a toilet that smelled as though a small animal had died in it and been sainted afterward. It was early June. Outside, the air smelled of summer in the Irish way, which is to say rain not yet fully decided. Inside, the television over the bar was showing tournament analysis with the kind of solemnity that makes you wish sports journalists would all be made to build roads for a month.