Day 1

Not much internet time, so I’ll be quick.  We woke up Saturday morning and threw our gear in the Chariot with about 45 minutes to get to Hyde Park (in the heart of London) for the Rally Launch.  It took over 2 hours.  London is ridiculous.  It’s a fantastic city, but if you ever drive there after reading this post it’s your own fault if your head explodes.  It got to the point where people we asked for directions would give us different answers for something 3 blocks away…we went the wrong way down a one-way and rana bunch of lights completely by accident…we even drove through Buckingham Palace, but sadly, Andy wasn’t on his game and the Queen turned him down.

Now, as for the Launch…that 2 hours may have been the most fun of all time.  We rolled up to people cheering and screaming, parked, checked in, decorated the Chariot, and got interviewed/filmed but loads of people (including the Discovery Channel).  We screamed and hollered, ran around like wild men, made last minute changes to our route, received a bunch of goodies to bring to CNCF in Mongolia, and were off.

We made it to Prague at 3pm local time.  We drove for 24 hours straight.  Here’s how it went down…

We left the Launch and worked our way back out of London and down to Dover to catch the 6pm ferry to Calais, France.  That went without a hitch, and the ferry was badass.  We saw the white cliffs of Dover and had a pint and met more Ralliers.  Once in France, we went east.  That was pretty much the extent of navigation, as we had no map of Europe and only a zoomed-in printout of the meeting place in Prague the Rally Honchos gave us before we left.

***Disclaimer…the next paragraph is not for youngins***

We stopped for gas somewhere in France.  I had just dozed off and Andy decided to try and keep from doing that again, so he went in and bought the dirtiest French porn magazine he could find and was on his way out to lay it in my lap and take a bunch of bribery pictures.  Luckily, my bladder intervened and I was in the restroom.  Now say what you want about the purchase, but like many things we’ll own on this trip, it basically turned into currency…

We went through Belgium, which was celebrating its national holiday.  We pulled in for gas again in Brussels and the parking lot was like a huge party.  We parked up and got to talking with some people, and up walks this dude in a jail-bird costume named Bart.  He was carrying a bottle of wine and said he had to trade it for something else.  We were digging through all our crap trying to find something worth contributing to a bachelor party, when Andy grins and reaches down and pulls out the porn.  They screamed, we screamed, pictures were taken, and Bart and his bud Steven signed the car.  To whoever says we’ll miss out on culture by driving right through countries, I give you Brussels on their national celebration.

Then we drove across Germany.  Yup, right across her.  We went through Frankfort and Wurzberg and Nurnbern, then the highway ran out.  So we were lost somewhere in the Southeastern German countryside for an hour or so, then found the other side of the construction one mile away from where it ran out.  Whop.  Then off to the Czech Republic chugging energy drinks (called “Ex,” some natural Kombucha energy drink the Rally Honchos gave us…it’s completely awesome) and trying to maintain sanity.

We pulled into Prague and we were hallucinating.  We were exhausted.  Well, we were also in a major Eastern European city with no map, address, or understanding of why they have words without vowels.  We basically just drove towards “Centrum” under the assumption that meant “Center” and found the middle of the city.  Prague is amazing.  It’s got cobble-stone streets and more historic looking buildings than anything I’ve seen.  We eventually found directions to the bar where the Rally Party was going to be, then found someone who spoke enough English to give us directions to our hotel, and crashed for a while.  We woke up around 8 and headed to the Rally Party, had a couple burgers and some beer, and walked around the city until 3am.

The wildest part was seeing all those people we saw in England.  Everyone was exhausted.  It just doesn’t matter.  It’s like everybody here has known each other for years.  Imagine having a chat with two people from New Jersey while on a ferry from England to France, then getting in a car and driving 800 miles to Prague, going to a bar and talking to the same people about the crap you encountered on the way.  Awesome…in every way possible…

…and that’s just Day 1 in Europe people.

We’re fixin to walk around Prague for a spell then it’s on to Budapest, Hungary.  I’ll try and put up some pics in the next post.  Keep putting up awesome, folks…you know we will

Skip, out. (SkipLizard Homepage)

This entry was posted on July 23, 2007 at 5:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.