“Road trippin’ with my two favorite allies, Fully loaded we got snacks and supplies, It’s time to leave this town, It’s time to steal away, Let’s go get lost.” In a great, grey industrial estate in Germany… is what the ‘Chili Peppers would have been chanting out of the stereo if only I had taken CDs with me for the journey….The journey began in the mountain city of Innsbruck. The sun was like a shiny yellow button in a woolen sweater depicting a mountain scene, knitted by your granny for Christmas of course. Spirits were high. I was part of the elite grommie mission unit code-named “TTR Car Recovery And Purchase.” Our task was the following; To navigate the Austria-German border by public transport, gain control of TTR 1, 2, and 3, and return to mission HQ safely. Simple; Or so we thought.

In fairness, the first leg of the journey went without hitch. Innsbruck Airport is rather intimate, so the chances of getting lost are slim. But, and this is a biggie, why oh why do they have all the eateries before you go through security? It must be the only airport in the world that works like that… I won’t bore you with details of the flight; a flights a flight right? There was a bit of drama when we landed, some sort of medical emergency forced the plane to stop outside the freight hangers. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I needed treatment asap, I’m not so sure that UPS would be my first choice. Maybe some kind of make-shift splint could be fashioned from parcel tape…?

Now, the next observation may seem obvious, but I assure you if you are attempting to find somewhere in Germany, make sure you have a German speaker with you. We would have been up a brown creek without one. From deciphering the train timetable to liaising with the car rep after we temporarily lost our bearings, German is essential. Sadly, even German has its limitations. We had successfully implemented phase one of TTR C-R-A-P. The vehicles were raring to go, and only one question remained. Which way? In a tribute to the age old cliché; the Satellite Navigation system didn’t work. Perhaps a more appropriate term would be Satellite Navigatioff. Luckily, my car was the only one of the three crippled, so I sandwiched myself between the others, and the convoy finally creaked out of Köln.

Three words can be used, in order, to describe the journey as a whole; Rain, Traffic, and Fog. No matter, the stereo would be my salvation. All I needed was some phat beats, and a gnarly bassline, and I’d have been sorted. “Bugger,” I hadn’t brought any CDs. Plan B: German Radio. There was bound to be some banging German Trance, or better yet, some driving rock: AC/DC, Jet, The Answer… Instead, I ended up giving the seek button a thorough seeing to. It was like playing International Track & Field on the N64 ((For those old enough to remember), and to top it off thumb cramp was setting in. Decisive action had to be taken, and with some maniacal flashing, and judicious use of the hazard lights, we pulled over to a service station and I borrowed some music. Foo Fighters acoustic CD; sweet.The stop was also a great time to get into a beverage consumption routine. It went something like this:

1. Red Bull
2. Coffee
3. Red Bull
4. Coffee
5. Big Red Bull
6. Big Coffee

There is a pattern there somewhere…Right, I feel like I have typed quite enough for this escapade. And clearly, as I am writing this down, we got back to HQ safely in the end. The moral of this story is, erm, roadtrips are fun!Peace