Color that country in

When my wife and I got engaged I gave her a choice: either get an engagement ring or take a 3 week trip to Europe. The smart women choose Europe.

As part of the tour we stayed a few days in Zurich (each day we went to some other place in Bavaria or Switzerland). When we left Zurich our next stop was Munich which is fairly close as Eurail goes. So instead of going directly to Zurich I decided she should see the medieval part of Salzburg. As expected the Swiss trains were efficient and the station times were always correct down to the minute. That all changed the second we hit Austria. Just inside Austria the train stopped and we sat there for 4 hours. Apparently somewhere along the track someone had committed suicide by train. I could never get the full story as the Austrian I was talking to was so excited I could barely understand his German (at least that’s my story and I am sticking with it).

Anyway, it was too late to go to Salzburg, so we got off the train in Innsbruck to find a train to Munich. I noted that there was a train, the Dalmatian Express, going north due in about an hour. We waited the hour, no train. We waited another hour, still no train. Finally after three hours a train arrived, the Dalmatian Express. So we hopped on and went to a seat. My wife promptly went to sleep and I gazed out the window (Austria is really a gorgeous country). After awhile I noticed we were climbing up a very pretty pass. Half way up I saw a sign the said “Brenner”. The name was familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. My geography is good, but not so good as to recognize small name places in Austria unless something important happened there.

Then it hit me, Brenner Pass is where Erwin Rommel learned the art of war in World War I. Of course that means we are on the border between Austria and Italy.............. Opps. I wake my wife up and tell her that we are in the wrong country. The train came to a stop in Brenario, we flash our passports to get off one train, flash our Eurail pass to get on the next and off we go back to Innsbruck. So my wife has officially been to Italy. We eventually made it to Munich late that night (after spending yet another couple hours in the Innsbruck station).

By the way, if I had been asleep we could have found ourselves in Tito's Yogoslavia without a visa and probably in deep trouble.

Slipping Anchor

As noted in an earlier article, the navy taught my father how to sail a sailboat. Thanks to that I have had many sailing adventures (British Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Florida Keys, US Virgin Islands, etc.). But one of the best adventures happened in 1981. My dad was taking my mom and several other women on a trip to the south Pacific and decided that another male was needed to help sail the 49 foot yacht. That somebody was me. As reward for being a cabin boy/pilot mix after the sailing we went to New Zealand and Australia.

On the boat all of the rooms were taken so I slept on deck. One night we had anchored on a very narrow sand bar next to an island. When night fell and after my eyes adapted to the dark I could see the outline of the islands in just the starlight (the moon was new so it wasn't out that night at all). We all went to bed (ok to deck) and I went to sleep around 9 pm local time.

I awoke. Something didn't seem quite right. I looked at the mast and noted that the stars were moving. I sat up quickly and looked at the island. It was also moving. We had slipped anchor.

I went below and woke up my dad to tell him we were going out to sea. Fortunately we were able to see where we were by the starlight. In about a half-hour we navigated back to the sand bar and reset the anchor. This time I had to drive in thirty feet of water at 3 AM to make sure the anchor had set. Then we went back to bed and slept soundly for the rest of the night.

Island Car

A year after we married my wife got a job as a math professor at the College of the Virgin Islands (now UVI). For the next three years I worked here and there; book store clerk, astronomy lecturer at a local resort, adjunct professor, and full time professor.

We lived on the top of the island on an old sugar estate. We had brought a car with us to the islands, a yellow Mercury Bobcat hatchback with "5" on the floor and bucket seats. We had to drive just about everywhere, so this poor car was very much over worked. Furthermore as time went on it started to rust out, becoming an island car.

First the left rear foot of the driver's seat punched through the bottom of the car. As a fix we put a flattened coffee can on the floor under the foot.

Then the driver-side door started to fall off (but never quite did). We could no longer close the driver door from the inside. Well no problem, just get in the passenger side and crawl over the stick shift.

That's when the passenger side door decided to no longer be open able from the outside. Now we had to have a routine: 1. Open driver side door, 2. Open passenger side door from the inside, 3. Close driver side door from the outside, 4. Go around the car, 5. Enter the passenger side, 6. Close that door, 7. Crawl over the stick-shift and drive off.

Finally a few months before we left the right side front light fell out, as it had rusted out from its moorings. Of course the light was still held by the wires and amazingly still worked. For several days as we drove at night the light would bounce around shining at all sorts of random things. Eventually we were able duct tape the thing in, but we really never could quite aim it correctly.

This was what we left in the island not to mention an almost rusted out hood and wheel wells. In three years we turned a little yellow car into a beloved rust bucket, our little island car.

Update: My eldest daughter reminds me that we had to use a crochet hook to reset the carburetor after starting the car towards the end.