The "Irish Touch"

It seems fitting today to publish a post with such a title.

I'm not sure why, but for some reason a large number of American gondoliers are of Irish heritage.
Boston, Coronado, Newport Beach and Alamitos Bay are a few of the U.S. operations owned and/or launched by folks who can trace their lineage back to the Emerald Isle.

Driving by a local Irish Pub today, I noticed the crowd of people, all dressed in green, and remembered something amusing from the Hudson River Expedition.

The following was originally posted on October 11th, of 2007. It was after the expedition was complete, and we were loading the gondola into the moving van.

"While removing the trailer from the hitch on the truck, I noticed something new on my trailer: little shamrock stickers all over both sides. In the FDNY world, a large percentage of the firefighters are either Irish or Italian. It seems that when the trailer was stored in a firehouse lot, the “Italian” gondola trailer was “marked” by Irish firefighters. I laughed out loud at the thought of it, and still snicker when I think about it two days later."

The Irish firefighters gave our trailer the "Irish Touch".
Almost a year and a half has passed, and I still crack up thinking about those shamrock stickers.