Stranded

So I didn't think that traveling would be easy, but no one could have predicted we would run into as many challenges as we have in this first week of the tour. We are currently holed up in a hotel in Geneva, after the Messy Days Express broke down yesterday.

The tour didn't start strong, we missed the train to Dover by about 2 minutes, the next day we got lost in Dunkirk and couldn't find anywhere to eat, more problems. We finished that day in Ghent, Belgium, where after getting horribly lost again we managed to get the Messy Days bogged thanks to our parking not on the concrete tire paths provided but on the grass so that our awning would look more impressive.

Day 4 provided more challenges as our Tom Tom broke down as we tried to go into France, all of a sudden we were back to navigating by the sun, this day also saw us get to our campsite so late that the reception had all ready shut, leaving us on the side of the road for the night.

Day 5 was full of positives, we did briefly get stuck in a huge traffic jam out side of Charles De Gaulle and we didn't actually camp at the camp site we originally planned on, but all in all that day wasn't that bad.

Day 6 will live in infamy, we set off in high spirits, the Kloss had fixed the Tom Tom and we were heading for a Feed Station. Unfortunately, trouble was just around the corner as we managed to get the Messy Days stuck in a ditch when we tried to park on the side of the road. Thankfully 20 or so people on the side of the road came and helped and we manged to push the 4,500 kilo beast back on the road. The rest of day 6 was fine, except for when we arrived at the Col de la Colombiere where we were going to stay the night, the only stretch of road that the Messy Days could stop on was a serious 6 degree incline, not a comfortable nights sleep.

Day 7 was an excellent day for the tourists, we saw an excellent stage of cycling and had a fun day in the sun. the trouble struck when we got caught in a ridiculous traffic jam, a 50 minute journey blew out to closer to 5 hours, we spent another night on the side of the road. Day 8 isn't even worth a mention, we cut the Tour de France to spend the day in Geneva, Switzerland and had an all round enjoyable day. The only real problem was we missed a bus and had to spend 25 minutes waiting for the next one.

Day 9 provided the piece de resistance however when half way through the day, just as we got ready to head for the Col De Galibrier (massive hill on today's stage) the Messy Days wouldn't start. Four hours on the side of the road later a tow truck finally arrived and we headed off for the Fiat Dealership to try and get it fixed. It is now mid day on the next day, the only English speaking person at Fiat is not giving us much hope of salvation today so the trip is really off the rails. The lack of other languages amongst our touring team is really quite noticeable, and is helping us understand why other Europeans tend to treat us English speaking monkeys with contempt.

The only upside is that surely after this nothing worse can happen. Hopefully tomorrow we will be back on the road for Monaco and Anitbes, then rejoin the tour for the race to Paris.

Quick Update

Hello

Am in a truck stop in Belgium, it is day three of the mega journey. So far we have managed to miss trains, get caught in thunderstorms, get lost (twice), bog the bus at the camp site, and do very little touristing.

But on top of that the actual tour de france has been pretty good so far, we are starting to get our bearings a little bit better and should be more succesful over the next few days.

Not much else, Dav Ross joins in a couple of days and then we head for the Alps, which should be good.

Bill

The End of The Beggining

There is a point when you realize that maybe things in your life aren't as perfect as you thought they were. For BA in London that moment came about fifteen minutes ago. On the back of three weeks of whiskey being required for sleep at night I realized I was at a low point when Neil Cavuto (of Your World with Neil Cavuto on Fox) nearly drove me to throw my lap top across the room.

I was just finishing my third drink for the evening when Cavuto had the gall to suggest that QLD's own Mohammed Asif Ali was a terrorist. Incensed I slammed my drink on the coffee table and attempted to throw my laptop at the TV. Luckily for me I am watching Fox News on my Laptop so the metaphysical impossibility of throwing something at itself saved the fate of the Dell Inspirion.

One of my favorite scenes of celluloid history is in the Ivan Rietman classic Stripes when Winger realizes he will be dead in 6 months if he continues with life as he is currently living it. Winger joins the army (with hilarious results) but I am going to try and shake things up by embarking on the Grand Tour of Europe- 2007, known on other sites as the Tour de Fear .

I've just about packed my bags (that is I have thought about what to do with my stuff) and quit the job. The bus is hired, the e-tinerary has been created, its time to venture out and leave this cold, wet, dull city in my past.

We are going to start this July with a casual jaunt around France in the HMAS: Messy Days Express, joined by long time supporter and Team Love Train Domination team mate Kapitan Kloss, and my old nemisis, the A team's Dav Rossi. July will see your favorite blogger visiting all the sites of France (the English Channel and the Cognac Distillery - we will find something to do with the rest of the month), who knows where we will end up? (if I was a better blogger I would have a Google Earth mash up showing the route). Also follow closely for a surprise visit from Le Chez who we're told is still lurking somewhere in the South of France. Who knows, maybe we will end up at a mustard or a cheese factory - Whoa, we may have to rate a few posts (AO) in the coming month.

Oh God, Cavuto is gone and has been replaced by The Big Story with John Gibson - why do I do this too myself? We've switched to the old tawny now.

So at the end of July we will drop the dead weight represented by the Kapitan and Dav Rossi (who is going home with a ring in his pocket - you heard it here first). And adventuring off along the Mediterranean Coast - the e-tinereary is less specific here, basically the entry looks like this: "August - ??". We will see what happens. The August Adventures will be worked out by a complex formula basically looking something like: how far will the money go? (if you are contacted by anyone from Barclays, Visa or American Express asking about me - pretend you don't know me) but hey- even if I only sit on a beach in Croatia for the month I will still be rocking harder then most of my winter bound constituents.

Finally the Grand Tour will find its end in the decadence dipped debacle that will be the Rugby World Cup 2007 in France. Joined by a no less luminary support crew as the Kapitan, the Ayatollah, F.U.C, Duggan (who needs a nickname), Dangerous, and others. September (and early October) promises to open the all ready wide eyes to their furtherest point yet.

The blog posts may come a little slowly over the next few months - for this I apologize, but know that it is better that I get out of Britain and the utter Fear that currently congests the streets (Seriously three machine guns on the way to work this morning - someone in the the first world beat that!). Anyways, the dream is finally coming to fruition, don't be afraid to come and visit! (some lesbian on The Big Story just said that touching is a form of sexual assault. Am I assaulting myself?)

Technical Notes

Hello

two quick technical notes:

1) have added a link (to the right) to my online picassa album- so those people who are asking for photos can see them there.

2) we have a new blog for the Tour de France- I will probably publish posts at both blogs but check it out to get the inside running from the Money and the Count as well.

http://letourdefear07.blogspot.com/

B A Tron

Box Ticking

So when you move to a city like London there are any number of things you 'just have to do' in order to get the full experience. That is, you a long list of things with a box next to each one and must tick off the box in order to claim genuine Londoner status.

So with the grand depart fast coming up I have been madly trying to tick off as many boxes as possible in the last month so that I can say that I did it. (some bridge)

It all started last weekend when old Joe Knorks and I had a grand day out to get a number of boxes ticked. We started with the V and A museum - which is basically a homage to the great tradition of Brits stealing the best things another culture has to offer. Quite a good museum though, lots to see, some cool sculptures etc. Then we went to Harrods - which is big, you have to give it that. The notable part of the store was the Wimbledon range of clothing - was very close to buying the best cardigan that has ever been knitted, but couldn't justify 500 Aussie dollars for a cardy. Finally we set off for the river in order to find the MI6 building - I know what your thinking - in Golden Eye Bond gets from the MI6 building, past the eye and bast the millennium dome within about 30 seconds of each other - but it turns out they are in three distinctly different parts of the city.

(Half expected to run into Kapitan Kloss - but he must have been inside)

So with the wind in our sails and three boxes ticked in one afternoon we decided to have another go at ticking some boxes this last Wendesday - by going to Wimbledon to see some tennis. I left work mid afternoon on a slightly overcast day with expectations of seeing a solid couple of hours of Tennis - but conditions would conspire to screw me.

I got the overland from Waterloo to Wimbledon, intending to meet Joe Knorks and catch a bus to the Championships, but was surprised to walk out of Wimbledon station straight onto centre court:

(Wimbledon Centre Court - Smaller then you would expect)

(Four Time, Four Time, Four Time, Four Time Wimbledon Champion - or could it have been a look alike considering what was happening on Court 1 at the actual Wimbledon at the time?)

Anyways, I was quite surprised to walk out of the station straight into a Roger Federer match, I watched for a few minutes and started to realize that the reason he was has won so easily for so many years was the quality of his opponents- it appeared he was playing school girls! Then I realized that this wasn't the actual wimbledons and was more a promo type thing.

Right then - I had to wait for Joe Knorks, I got there ten minutes early but expected her to be there considering she had nothing else to do that day. But Joe Knorks being who she is managed to keep me waiting till 4:30, I was annoyed but not that annoyed (I'm not that big a tennis fan, we were really only going to tick the box after all) there was some nice sun, and laughing at all the people who were asking the fake Roger Federer for autographs was good. Anyways, Joe Knorks finally arrived so we headed off for the championships - or should I more accurately say the queue - a central part of the Wimbledon's experience.

(Was more then prepared to give a mouth full to the smug jerk who gave me my 'Guide for Queueing for the Championships' but Joe Knorks stopped me as there were children present)

So we stood around in the queue until about 5 when all of a sudden it started to rain - just as we got to go into the ticket area - no problem we thought, just a quick delay, will give us a chance to get the lay of the land and find some booze. But oh were we wrong.

(Joe Knorks with a Pimms at Wimbledon - thirty years to the day her parents where there. Could the Wimbledon Pimms be the reason she is with us today???)

(Just one for the Old Grey Mare - you wouldn't get away with that sort of health and saftey risk in Oz).

So it rained for maybe 6 minutes, enough time for us to get into the courts, find a pimms, and inspect the facilities. We went straight to court 8 to get a good seat in order to watch the Stubbs doubles match that was nearing conclusion. We sat down and waited.

(Rain delay Wimbledon Style - no your not wrong- that's sunlight in the back ground not rain - oh so they would be playing then you say - apparently not)

and waited and waited. (hang on Race 7 is about to start, hopefully the Kiwi's can make this go into a couple more races - Massa has the French gp all sown up - no Raikonnin got him in the pit stops)

I'm back the race hasn't started yet... where were we? oh waiting, and waiting.

The sun came out, I worked on my tan, but I didn't see any tennis - Why? because British people are the biggest girlie men that ever lived - after 10 minutes I was a little bit annoyed, after 20 disgruntled, after 40 - pissed off. The organizer finally came over the loud speaker to announce that there was still rain around - could have fulled me, but just to prove his point we got a minutes worth of drizzle just after he spoke.

That minutes worth of rain cost us another 40 mins of waiting (we were drinking during this break so it wasn't that bad) we used this time to walk all around and see the sights - the show courts, henman hill, etc. And finally the loud speaker crackled to life again and he said THE SAME THING - once again a light drizzle happened and we settled in to wait again. You have to understand that even though it was now 7 pm we have sun light till 10 pm at the moment so there was still a chance to see some tennis.

Finally at 8 pm the loud speaker came on again and announced that the covers were coming off - but he covered himself by saying that there was some rain just west of the courts and if it hit we were fucked. The covers came off to loud cheers from the few die hards who had hung on in desperation.

(A Tennis Court)

So they got the covers off and we started to look around for the players (we all know the reason I was there was to see fit chicks in short skirts). but the only thing we saw was suddenly a lot of court attendants listening to their radios - to our outrage (and this time I did give them a mouthful - long evening on the beers by this time) they started to put the covers back on!

(When the rain came it came hard)

The rain then hit, and hit properly, the loud speaker came to life and announced that their would be no play that day - the dream was over.

So deafeted we then started the two hour journey home - Wimbledon, and the softness of the British people in general certainly got bad mouthed for the entire journey home.

Anyways, I didn't see any tennis - so I don't really know if I can tick the box or not, but thats ok - I don't care, I will never go back.