ROWING: The burly man in the T-shirt lugging his bag through arrivals at Dublin Airport is a bit put out. A long journey, a delayed arrival and now the exit route is being clogged up by a media posse bunched around a slim, golden-haired girl and her loquacious whippet-thin friend. Who are these people, anyway?
Tori Holmes, all seven stone and 21 years, and Paul Gleeson (29) smile through it all. They crossed the Atlantic in a rowing boat; they travelled farther under their own steam than most of the disgruntled travellers had flown in jets. And in response to a random question they tell the startled media yes, they would consider doing it again.
"Originally we said no, but on reflection . . ." ventures Gleeson. Holmes interrupts: "If you can do it once, you can do it again."
Gleeson is the talker, the leader, but Holmes radiates tenacity, a hint of titanium.
"Not being rowers, not being sea people, the only thing that got us through was self-belief. Even a flicker of doubt is seriously dangerous," she tells a friend later.
They kick to touch about their future plans romantically - though friends wink knowingly - but openly and entertainingly relive the good and bad of their 86-day odyssey from La Gomera in the Canary Islands to Antigua.
"It's great to be back," says Limerickman Gleeson. "We're dreaming about this for the last six weeks . . . It's a little surreal - we didn't think there'd be anyone here to be honest."
How would he describe rowing the ocean?
"It's hard to summarise . . . I suppose you just go through every high and low you can think of emotionally and physically; good days, bad days, dangerous days."
Holmes says the best part was the end, with the sun coming up as they rowed toward land: "I felt like Christopher Columbus."
The worst had been when they were tossed by storms, "the realisation of how dangerous it was. But the good outweighs the bad".
The media caravan rolls away as suddenly as it unfolded. Friends hug them, talk of a party. One, Paul O'Neill, looks them up and down: "You should be looking an awful lot more shook." Maybe some people really do thrive on adversity.
