AUSFAHRT

I will be 100% honest. I did not plan on writing another entry again so soon. After my last entry received a grand total of 2 comments, I got the message that there are even fewer people following this Blog than I had originally suspected. Nevertheless, I had a fairly cool experience that was worthy of posting to the both of you. The fact that this entry deals with the same topic as my last entry might simply be a coincidence. It is more likely that it is because this adventure was in such stark contrast to the other that it had that much more of an impact on me. Either way…here it is.

Before sharing my great experience, I thought it was worthwhile to share one more story of driving in Morocco that happened on Friday. I am thankful to say that I was traveling separately than the guys that defied death. We had some visitors from the US here all last week teaching academics on some of the systems in the F-16 (LINK 16 reps for my Viper savvy friends…if you are my Mother, that last sentence might as well have been written in Greek). Anyway, they followed me to work the first day so I could show them how to get to the base (I also taught them the secret to not waiting for over an hour). We met up at the Shell station on the way out of town and started our trek to Ben Gureir Air Base. I took it easy on them and did my best to supress my Mario Andretti instincts. At one point I got behind a guy that felt 50 kph was way better than the limit of 100 kph. It did not take much effort (even in my crappy clown car) to pass this guy. I checked my rearview mirror to see if my entourage had followed and found that they had not. I immediately knew the problem…they were new to Morocco. There was a solid white line and the foolishly thought that meant that they couldn’t pass (silly Americans). After they had gone about 5 minutes, on a straight road with no dashed line in sight, they finally passed with amazing success. By the time Friday came around, they felt they had mastered the driving in Morocco (silly Americans). They once again found themselves behind a slow mover. They checked for oncoming traffic and did not find anyone there…except for a single car a ¼ mile ahead that was parked on the side of the road (this is foreshadowing). Well to no one’s surprise (except the 4 Yankees in the car), just as they began to pass, the car on the side of the road thought it would be a good time to play chicken. The Moroccan won. My colleagues slammed on the brakes and pulled aggressively back behind the car they were trying to pass. Sadly they still had too much overtake. With the brakes firmly applied, they began to turn sideways…still gaining on the car in front of them. With no other options available, they swerved to the right and started to pass the car on the right side. I’m happy to say that they made it work…they passed the car on the right…while their car was literally turned sideways…narrowly avoiding the ditch on the right. I could not have been more proud than if that was my own son driving…they were the first graduates of Frosty’s Moroccan driving school. Anyway…it was a cool enough story to share here, and applicable to my driving this week.

I am currently in Germany. I had to come to Ramstein Air Base to accomplish my flight physical. I also have always really liked the German outfits and wanted to get my hands on some of those cool threads! I flew into Frankfurt on Sunday and rented a car (that could be a post all by itself, but I’m sure I would lose one of the two people that reads this). I saw on my orders that I was once again going to be stuck with an “economy car” (you can be happy to know your tax dollars are not renting me luxury cars). What I didn’t know is that “economy car” in German still means BMW!! I have wanted a BMW for years, so this was my big opportunity to see if it lived up to all of the hype. I won’t ramble as much as I normally do. I will simply say that it most certainly does! The fact that I was free to see what this car could do in the country of its birth (and no speed restrictions) was quite a blessing. It is worth saying that I had no real knowledge of where the heck I was going. It is also worth saying that I didn’t care because where ever I was going…I was getting there fast! I decided to take things “slow” at first. By slow, I realized that I was soon going 150 kph. That is nearly the top speed in my POS Peugeot. That’s right, I was almost running at 100 mph and I still had 2 gears to go. Anxious to see what the BMW could do, I continued to accelerate. Two things happened…first, I topped out at 210 kph (130 mph). It’s important to note that I topped out…the car still had much more to give. Why did I top out before the car you might ask? That was due to the second thing that happened. I’m not sure if it is an actual BMW feature, but at exactly 210 kph, a vision of my wife appears in the passenger’s seat and begins to yell at me to slow down. In spite of her majestic appearance that forced me to slow down, I still felt like I had given that car a good run…until I realized that I was still getting passed as if I was standing still. Seriously!! These Germans would never survive in Morocco.

As I slowed things down, I was able to take in a little more of the amazing scenery on my way to the base. The drive was great, but I struggled to keep my bearing as I tried to read the names of the towns that I was passing thru…Kaiserslautern, Saarbruecken and Einsiedlerhof. Needless to say that I began to tune out the names of the towns and chose to focus on the drive. That all changed when I passed a sign that I assumed was the name of another town. AUSFAHRT. I about died. It took me a second or two to register what I had just read. I got a good kick out of my childlike sense of humor and continued on. I soon realized that either every city in Germany was named AUSFAHRT, or that it meant something else. It didn’t take me too much longer to realize that AUSFAHRT means EXIT. That inspired another round of laughing as I couldn’t help but agree that if life has taught me one thing…AUSFAHRT is indeed an EXIT! I can only imagine that my friends that nearly killed themselves passing a slow moving Moroccan on the right…sideways…near a ditch, had a few AUSFAHRTS in their own car!

Happy driving everyone!