The great road trip of ‘08

Like so many other guys out there, I used to be the kinda person who loved his daily routine and was thrown back by the mere thought of any changes in planning, or the suggestion of postponing something in favor of something else.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but this certainly does not seem to be the case anymore.. Rather, it now seems that the crazier the plan, the more I’m up for it. Which is why I showed little to no reaction when I was sitting at Tina’s one Wednesday morning, drinking a cup of coffee and she asks me if I’d maybe be interested in heading out on a 4 hour road trip to Skagen.. I merely shrug my shoulders and say sure.. Some thirteen minutes later, we’re on our way into Tina’s car (after having been attacked by the cutest little puppy ever which even I wanted to take home).. Two minutes later, classic rock blaring from the speakers, we’re off.

No more than probably five minutes later, we’re stopped dead in our tracks on a motorway truck stop, inspecting the damages from our first major accident of the day.. A head on collision with a sheet of plywood dropped by a passing truck. “This is just great,” I’m shouting at the heavens (and various Swedish tourists), “not even five miles in and we’ve already had our first accident.. Man, we’re never gonna get to Skagen!” A statement I’d soon have to rephrase as a full inspection showed no damages to the car and with nothing more than a bit of a scare, we set sail north again. Come Hell or high water, we were set out to make it this time! Yea, I say this time because there’s actually a pretty humorous account somewhere on this blog about how to not get to Skagen.

So, yea, things definitely weren’t going to be too easy for us this time. Lets just say that most people are idiots and dont’ deserve to hold a license.. There, I’ve said it.. And while I’m at the whole bitching thing, what the hell is up with Danish summer weather? Heading north, we went from sun shine over cloudy to pouring rain and back again.. more than once.. I half-heartedly expected to look out the side window and notice a twister or two at any given moment. Whatever happened to those nice, long, sunny days of my childhood? Give ‘em back, ya hear?

But, of course, these issues were nothing compared to those of our last trip. Our single largest hassle proved to be stopping for gas only to realize that the machine would not accept Tina’s VISA – a fact which left a sizable dent in my bank account as all gas purchases then had to be charged to my card. Oh well.. We also ended up eating lunch at some to me completely unknown McDonald’s in the middle of f’ing nowhere which Tina located using her McRadar. Eating at McDonald’s was a pretty interesting experience following mine and Dunkel’s burger binge a few days before and my strange relationship with anything deep friend.. Essentially my stomach was telling me to not go for fries or anything deep fried for that matter.. On the other hand, my mind was telling me not to opt for a big beefy burger on account of me having OD’ed on them a few days before. Salvation came in the form of my guardian angel Tina who recommended a healthy chicken burger option which was actually pretty good.. Plus I got to keep the toy from her Happy Meal.. So double up on goodness right there!

Following our lunch, we headed back on track and suddenly remembered that hey, our friend Morten actually lives in Skagen these days, and that we should probably give him a call to see how he was doing. Morten, it turned out, was enjoying his day off and sounded thrilled to hear that we were actually driving around in his neck of the woods. We arranged for us to give him a call back once we were closer and following some pretty shady directions which included stuff like “turn left at the first round about after a gas station” and “locate the green Citroën”, we actually managed to find where Morten was living and he quickly popped out to say hi, looking a equally parts surprised, happy and hung the fuck over. After a quick tour of his pad, we did the only reasonable thing to do, popped by a local store to pick up a few beers, then set out to play tourists.

Skagen is a pretty interesting place in that it is actually located at the very tip of the main Danish peninsula, Jutland, this makes for some pretty interesting sights, as you can actually walk on out to the very tip of the country and stand there chilling with one leg in either of the surrounding oceans which just happen to meet at this particular tip.. This, we of course had to do, and since we brought beers, you just know it was gonna be good! And it was, albeit windy, too. We drove north as far as we could, then hitched a ride on this tractor gone truck like piece of machinery the rest of the way, popped open a few beers and stood there for a while, watching, talking, taking pictures and getting our feet wet. I even decided to call my mother to let her know what we were doing.. Something which I apparently don’t do too often because some of the first words out of her mouth when I went “Hey ma, guess where I am?” were “Are you drunk?!” – anyways, she pretty quickly lightened up a bit to our crazy idea and actually thought it all sounded like a pretty great plan.

Rather than risking getting stuck in the sand on a tractor ride back, we decided to hike the short distance back to compensate for the extra calories of the beers and the feast we were about to enjoy. You see, Morten works as head chef at a family restaurant in Skagen, so he managed to score us a pretty sweet deal on dinner.. 40% off to be exact.. Now, a lot of things could be said about this restaurant visit. My favorites included meeting up with an old friend, Robert who also just happened to be working at said restaurant, Tina picking a pip from a lemon wedge out of my water to flattering comments about how much I loved her after I’d damn well nearly hurt myself trying to get the damn pip out myself.. Oh and the fact that I was charged a total of DKK 35 for a starter, a main course and drinks. The fact that I had to send my food back twice and ended up eating my main course while Tina and Morten attacked the dessert.. Well, lets just not talk about it.. At least they comped me for it.

After this interesting dining experience, Tina and I decided that it was probably about time to head back home. We had almost a four hour ride ahead of us anyways and the clock was rapidly approaching 9 PM. Saying our goodbyes with Morten, we turned the car south and set off.. And we made it through a good five kilometers before all hell broke lose. I’m not really too sure what all happened but the known facts are that Tina asked me to get something for her in her hand bag, as I did, I’m thinking to myself “this is pretty weird, I don’t think women’s hand bags are supposed to be wet on the inside” .. Neither did I reckon they were supposed to smell like cheap beer. Upon further inspection, it turns out that a pencil in Tina’s bag had punctured one of the beer cans that she put in there. I start asking Tina politely if there’s any chance she might be able to pull over and before she even has time to say “I don’t think this is a very good place”, the fissure in the punctured can grows larger and beer starts spraying everwhere inside the car.. Well, whaddayaknow? Apparently it was a good place to pull over anyways..

After throwing the can out the door, draining Tina’s bag and a half assed cleaning attempt we’re back on track, Tina at the wheels while I’m doing the best I can trying to dry off her stuff and getting the smell of beer out of her bag.. While having a beer ourselves. Yea, drinking and driving probably doesn’t sound like the best combination in the world but after a long day it was much needed, and everybody did stay below the limit. We did eventually make it back to Kolding at around 0:32 AM after a very hectic hell ride down a couple of narrow streets. Why such a hell ride, pray tell? Well, Tina had made the bold statement that we’d be home by 0:31 AM, so by the time 0:29 AM rolled around, she was a bit pressed for time.. Good effort, babe! I especially enjoyed the part where the entire contents of your bag and your CD collection came crashing into my lap.

All in all, an awesome day which was far from over. We’d said throughout the entire trip that we’d watch a movie once we got home.. Of course, we hadn’t really planned on being home quite so late, but watch Boondock Saints we did and it was much enjoyed.. Especially since it was accompanied by a nice bottle of red wine which went down much too quickly. I eventually made it home at around 3:30 AM feeling tired, worn out but strangely happy with the events of the day.