Gallivanting Our Way to the CMEpalooza Fall Agenda

The definition of gallivanting is “to visit or go to a lot of different places, enjoying yourself and not worrying about other things you should be doing.” The definition of traipsing is “to walk or move wearily or reluctantly.” I bring this to your attention because in last week’s blog post, Scott wrote that I spent the first part of July “…traipsing through the countryside of Ireland where the thermometer never cracked 65 degrees.”

This is incorrect. I was not traipsing. I was definitely gallivanting through the countryside (and cityside) of Ireland, enjoying myself and not worrying about other things that I should be doing. My wife, as usual, planned out an amazing agenda, which, as usual, she shared with me as a read-only Google doc. I’ve learned not to take it personally when she does this. It’s not like I would dare make any edits to the itinerary anyway.

As I was gallivanting around Ireland, I made note of several things that I found myself asking, why don’t we have this here? (by “here” I mean “the U.S.”) Here are a few examples: (please note that I realize that half of these examples are pub-related, and it’s only half because I held back other pub-related examples. This perhaps gives you an idea of what a good amount of my gallivanting consisted of. I’ll also note that some of these are not necessarily specific to Ireland and can also be found in the U.K. and other part of Europe. You get my point, though.)

Lager. But Derek, you are probably thinking to yourself, we have lager in the U.S. True, but not lager like this. In my neck of the woods, if you walk into a bar and ask for a lager, you are going to get a Yuengling Traditional Lager. It is amber colored and, how should I put this…not good. Order a lager in Ireland (or England., Scotland, etc.) and you get something light, bubbly, frothy, and delicious. It’s delightful!

Toasties. A toastie is basically just a grilled sandwich. Grilled cheese, grilled ham and cheese, tuna melt (true story: I had four tuna melts during my trip. I regret nothing.), etc. They’re basically a less pretentious panini. Yes, we have grilled sandwiches here, but toastie is more fun to say and in Ireland they are ubiquitous. You can walk into any pub and order some kind of a toastie and it will be great.

Hurling. No, not the kind of hurling you might do after having too many lagers and toasties at the pub. I’m talking about the sport of hurling. Have you watched this? I barely understand the rules or the scoring, but it looks to me like a cross between field hockey, lacrosse, and mixed-martial arts. It’s great fun to watch and I may have booed the bartender at the Hairy Lemon when he switched the TV from hurling to rugby. How will I know if Donegal won??

Whimsy. One of the places we stayed during our trip was the charming seaside town of Carlingford. In addition to beautiful views, hikes, and great pubs, Carlingford is also home to Ireland’s last remaining Leprechaun whisperer and, conveniently, the last living Leprechauns (there are 236). There is a cute little Leprechaun themed park which is very sweet and endearing. You can’t help but smile when you are there. We need more things like this in the world.

My sister is a college anatomy and physiology professor, and sometimes when she is telling me about different things she is doing with her class, I find myself asking, why don’t we have this here? (by “here” I mean “CME.”) There are so many different educators out there working in so many different fields, it seems a little silly to me that we don’t tap into more of these resources to find out what else is out there. We try to make an effort at doing this with CMEpalooza,, and you will hear from some new voices in the Fall agenda, but one thing we could do a better job of is busting outside of our CME bubble to find faculty from other areas. I would love to hear from anyone who might have good suggestions.

We hope to have an update for the CMEpalooza Fall agenda by the end of the month. In the meantime, I’ll be looking for some place in Philadelphia where I can have a decent lager and toastie while watching hurling with a Leprechaun.