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This is the view of Venice from the top of the Rialto bridge. Pretty sweet but there were about eight thousand of us up here.
It’s day four of my great European adventure and it struck me while doing 200 km/h through the Austrian mountains listening to
“Don’t Stop Believin” that I was a lucky guy. Being away from home sucks, I still have no clue how, when I was a younger mechanic, I managed to not have a fixed address for a good three or four years. Seriously, I would just go from couch to couch and live out of my OGIO. Now that I’m married with three dogs and a house with all the trappings that entails, I don’t want to go away from that for too long. How I ever did that back in the day is a constant source of amazement that is only tied with me being a factory mechanic for five years. Oh yeah, did I mention that the one day national format rules!
Altogether it was day six of being away from Hank, Fred, Buddy and my wife Angie and I’m starting to miss them (in that order… I’m kidding) but here I was driving a super cool Audi A5 Quattro on the side of a mountain and when I looked over to my left, it looked like
The Sound of Music was filmed right there and to my right-green hills with mountains behind them and a little town that looked out of another movie classic,
European Vacation.
Myself and Alan Brown had spent the morning in Venice and were now heading to Berlin, which was an 1,100 kilometer journey, but going 200 would help that out quite a bit. I had my iPod plugged in with all the favorites blasting and an open road on the other side of the world. I was coming from Slovenia, then Venice and now Berlin to drink in all the historic things that those destinations entail. Europe is like a church built in the 1500s with the same pews in it that people sat on back in the day. America is more like a Subway in a strip mall that’s twenty years old. I just thought that I was so lucky to have been to all these cool places and unofficially, this is county number 14 for me.
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You can go fast in Germany. In some spots anyways.
The weirdest thing happened to me tonight. Alan, who was the Moto XXX owner and mechanic for many years, was regaling me with stories of Larry Ward when he rode for them. This was right after we debated who had the better career – Larry Brooks or Kyle Lewis. I mean, LB was faster in his prime, we both agreed, but with Kyle winning some Japanese championships and racing longer and probably making more money than Larry, does that make a better career? You can understand the boredom we were experiencing here. So, back to the story: Alan and I were laughing at Big Bird’s goofiness on and off the track as Larry is legendary for his bike set-ups when my phone rang and it was Larry himself! Understand that I’ve probably spoken to LW on the phone maybe three times in my life and here he is ringing me when I’m listening to stories about him and I’m in Germany. He was looking for Ferry’s number but the whole thing just made me laugh and when I told him about it, he said there are no stories about him. Yeah right. Pretty funny huh?
Anyways, the language barrier hasn’t been bad at all as almost everyone with the exception of the cop in Slovenia has spoken some kind of English and we even ate Burger King today in Germany for dinner. Oh yeah, the cops. You may remember that I got a speeding ticket in Slovenia my first day here. Well today on the Autobahn in Germany I had a light flash at me under a bridge which I’m pretty sure was a photo radar thingy. Y’see, the Autobahn has no speed limits except for certain times where there is construction or they feel like you should slow down. I didn’t notice the “100” sign and I got a ticket. Then just before I pulled into this Marriott in Leipzeg for the night, I stopped past the white line and a light flashed that was so bright, I thought I was Travis Walton and they were coming to get me. So I most likely am going to get a few letters from Germany asking me for some money or Hertz will just charge my card. That was kind of the end of me feeling lucky to be here feeling but God must’ve sensed that because right after the whole blinding light thing, we drove past a Starbucks coffee 100 feet from our hotel. See, the man knocks you down but God brings you up because me not having to drink this devil-water Euros call coffee tomorrow is surely a sign that a God does exist.
Don’t Stop Believing indeed.
