Day One

D____

Yes, we made it safely back. Yes, I'm slow to write - but the hours have been filled with the sorts of things that fill these types of hours. Homeless, car-less, school-less, and damn too little time or money from on high to deal with the situation. Not complaining, you know all this as well as I (been there, done that, got the t-shirt) but I really believe the relocating is a greater sacrifice than time in a war zone. I definitely know which brings the most stress, hands down. Funny that in hindsight neither seems quite so bad. I guess that's part of human nature, that tendency to forget (or block) the worst of anything, and the reason we can do such things repeatedly. Or maybe it's not part of the universal condition, and is in fact an affliction that those of us who do things like 20+ years of military service suffer in blissful ignorance. If so, God help us if it's ever cured.

Sorry - wandered a bit. I will say this for the record - I may go back to Iraq, or visit Afghanistan for a first time, but I'll be damned if I pack the family off to any other spot after this one. You can taunt me with that vow should I break it in some distant future, but I'll add that the house I've committed to buying isn't the sort one lives in for just a few dozen months before driving the For Sale sign into the curbside grass, so factor that in before placing bets. The place in Germany was fine, and well situated, and I hated to see it and the adjacent acres of forest in the rear-view mirror, but the new place will certainly help make any longing for those days easier to bear.

Don't get me wrong - home in the USA is a good place to be. But there are indeed some things that were better about Germany. You and I know this, but for those who believe everything about America is better than anything about any other place, I offer one word: Beer. If they choose to continue arguing they are fools. As far as beer goes, I've hit upon something that might compensate - more about that in some near-future correspondence. No really, I'll be writing regularly now - I promise. It was the house-hunting that kept me afk - and the laptop shared with three kids maintaining contact with their friends on distant shores while I used my turn to plan another day's assault on my realtor’s patience. So, more on houses and the hunting thereof later too - for now I'll jump back to day one back here in the good ol' USA and offer my first impressions.

But darned if that doesn't bring me right to another thing the Germans do better than us - the highways. Once the big long plane ride (on a too-small plane) was over we still had miles to go. Seems there aren't any planes big enough to fly big dog in his crate to the smaller airport near Newbase. (Another "funny" story there too - it's actually cheaper to fly to Smallport than Big One, even with stopover at same big airport, so Uncle Sam was a bit reluctant to drop the extra dime. More on that later too. Maybe.) So we loaded 5 people, luggage, and two dogs in crates into rental vans (yes, two minivans, and we travel light) and set off down the highways. After a two-hour drive to Frankfurt, a two hour wait for departure, a many-hour flight across the Atlantic (during which we passed through a strange time-warp that saw us on the ground a mere three hours after departure - heh) and two hours to clear customs and one more to secure said rental cars we were entitled to a nights sleep, but we did so on the plane (24 hours without sleep prior to departure is the secret to "successful" sleep on a trans-Atlantic flight - at least it works for me) so with just enough daylight to get where we wanted to be we elected to press on.

We took the first exit to stop for food. For the record, our first American meal was Arby's - one of the few fast-food places not all over the German landscape or at least in the AAFES food courts. When we got back on the highway, we promptly found ourselves in our first American traffic jam. It was big-city rush hour, we were headed out of town, and apparently there was an accident. Given the quality of American drivers and laws governing their use of the highways, I expect there are multi-car pileups every day at rush hour, but could be wrong. Bottom line, big city was in the rear-view, and I had no problem with that.

In Germany a traffic jam is called a stau, and the Germans handle them very well. Wherever two lanes become one, the "zipper" is automatically used, and vehicles from each lane take turns merging into the one surviving lane. Meanwhile, back where the two lanes have slowed to a crawl, the vehicles in each lane split as far as possible to the outside of their respective lanes, creating an effective center lane for use by emergency vehicles that may need to move quickly forward to the source of the delay. In America none of these things are done, and the best you can hope for is that not too many of your immediate neighbors will lean on their horns in hopes of moving the row of vehicles extending to the horizon before them.

I've always enjoyed traveling America's highways, but the autobahn has probably ruined that for me, at least in some regards. Once we cleared the stau we sped back up to the government mandated speed limit of 55 mph (yes, less than 100 kph - I can hear you laughing now, but the trick is to barely press the gas pedal) and a few more miles out of town that limit jumped to 70. Of course, we couldn't actually go that fast - the left lane was filled with folks who apparently felt that speed was excessive. That happens when big trucks decide to pass other big trucks in Germany, but in compensation you can go as fast as your tire rating will allow. (I'll bet most Americans don't even know that the tires are the real determining factor in their ultimate safe driving speed - and since most here aren't rated above 80 mph those who do chose to drive faster than average probably don't realize the engine can do much more than the tires can bear - but I digress). The bottom line, I felt better and safer cruising the autobahn at 100+ mph than I did an American highway at 50-70.

The sad thing about American drivers tooling along slowly in the fast lane is that apparently they can do so even when not passing. You can pull right up behind someone going under the speed limit in the left lane with the right lane open, and they'll actually expect you to shift into the open right lane to pass them. I did that about 20 times in the first 100 miles.

I confess I fought the urge all the way to floor the accelerator and drive that speedometer needle to the far right - even with open road in front of me. But it wasn't a lack of urgency, it was a complete awareness that Americans on highways are the most dangerous people on earth, absolutely unaware of the world around them (a large number are chatting on cell phones) and completely unpredictable.

American comedians, if they aren't concerned with "political correctness" will sometimes refer to Asians as stereotypical bad drivers. The real joke here is one you'll get only if you've driven somewhere where people can actually drive. Unfortunately, the highway was my first impression of America, a place I've been absent from for all but a few weeks of the past four years. But I'm going to guess that most visitors here from foreign lands don't get their first impression of the USA from behind the wheel of a car. This is a good thing. Keep them away from the highways, and keep them away from the canned piss we call beer, and they'll likely believe this a nice place to visit.

Me, I want to live here.

Gotta go, daughter needs to chat with a friend in Chile. More later.

Cheers,
gh