This is Nick Baggarly and today is Wednesday, December 1st. We traveled from
Athens, Greece to
Patras, Greece.
On the way out of Athens, driving through the Northwestern most portion of the city, through unexpectedly narrow streets we stopped at the intersection for the road that would take us west towards the highway. While waiting for the signal, three boys ran up to the Land Rovers and, as if they knew we would be there, handed through the window of all things, several Land Rover Camel Trophy “Tonga 2000” stickers. It's hard to convey how unusual this was. Three boys playing in the street happen to have Land Rover stickers on them as they see five Americans driving Land Rovers. The fact that they made the effort to approach us was quite a coincidence. I took this as a sign that I am destined to become a Camel Trophy participant. But seriously, I've since decided that I don't believe in coincidence. I prefer to think this gesture is a sign that we were exactly where we were supposed to be at that moment in time.
Our first stop was a local shopping center that resembled a mini-mall back home. We pulled into a parking space beside a Dunkin Doughnuts bakery and ordered up a couple dozen sugar bombs and five coffees to go. With Jeff along you can bet there was a wide pastry assortment to chose from.
Also on the way out of town we noticed all the Greek letters on buildings and shops. For Todd, Jeff and I it brought back, of course, our college fraternity days. We were finally in a country where we knew enough to read the signs since the Greek and English alphabets are similar in terms of number of letters and phonetic sounds anyway. Reading Greek road signs is pretty fun. It's like deciphering a code where the majority of the message is not encoded at all. Chanda didn't know the Greek alphabet so I taught her a song that my brother Brad “Rattler” Baggarly taught me back when I pledged Sigma Nu at Cal Poly. I recorded it for your listening pleasure. Just click here.
Once out of the city we headed straight West. Thirty minutes later, Todd pointed to a sign for Korinthos, a city that is known by us as Corinth. It was strange passing this city because I had heard of both it's existence and significance but never knew it was located in Greece. Being raised as geography challenged American I can't tell you the locations of very many biblical Mediterranean cities and here we were, driving through one of them. A place where Jesus' Apostle, Paul had once walked. He wrote many letters to these people in his successful efforts to spread the word of Christ throughout the world.
We read a passage from Corinthians about marriage and abstinence and about discussed how women lead men astray from religion and we read through it with a wrinkled brow. Then we raised the question, did Paul walk through Corinth or did he simply write letters to them. Our guess is that he visited this city and established a church. Paul got around. Because he was a Roman citizen he would just get on a boat and go places. Todd remarked that if Paul ever wanted to get back to Rome he would get himself arrested so his captures would be forced to send him back to Rome to receive a trial.
The modern city of Corinth has a population of 23,000 people. It was rebuilt near the ancient city of Corinth after an earthquake in 1858. The nearby ancient city dates back to 3000 B.C. and was built around a huge rock called the Acrocorinthus that stands 1886 feet (575 meters) above sea level. I wished we could have seen this rock but we had a ship to catch.
The drive along the Greek coastline was beautiful but on rare occasion the beauty was marked with political graffiti. Occasionally we'd see large rocks, painted with signs that said down with America . The signs confused me because I had no idea that some people in Greece felt this way about America. President Clinton had just visited Athens few days ago and I heard his speech didn't go over so well. Everyone in downtown Athens was talking about it. Some folks in this country obviously don't agree with US involvement with the Serb, Albanian conflict.
At just about half way through our 200-kilometer drive today, Doug and Jeff had polished their entire box of doughnuts…that's weird. We learned this when we stopped for a break. After the break we handed the six remaining doughnuts from our box to Jeff. By the time we reached Patras, they too were gone!
When we arrived in Patras there were highway signs there to point the way to the ferry terminals and it couldn't have been easier as the road dumped us right out near the docs. We stopped in at the Superfast Ferry Lines to purchase our tickets. The cost was $68 per person and $35 per vehicle. Not a bad deal, especially for the Rovers.
We drove around the shipyard and parked at the mouth of the ship that would take us to Italy. For a change we had arrived somewhere early and had some time to kill. Doug, Jeff and Todd went to find some food and check out the local shops and Chanda and I headed off with the laptop to find an Internet café and upload some pictures. We walked uptown for about twenty minutes, along the way asking people if they could point the way to a café. I was stupid enough to ask an old guy for directions to an Internet Café. I think he knew what I was talking about but didn't know where one was. Then he shrugged and turned away quickly, disgusted with either my being a tourist or maybe he disliked technology or perhaps he was doubly-disgusted for both reasons. After asking four or five other people for directions we finally found it. The girl behind the counter served up a latte for Chanda and I and granted permission so I could jack the laptop onto their network. Five minutes later our computer had booted and obtained an IP address via DHCP. The amazing traveling laptop was once again on the Internet.
I realized the cafe connection wasn't fast enough to upload images and at about that same time I also discovered that I wasn't organized or prepared enough to send any pictures. This was often the case because I've been driving too much when I should instead hand the wheel over to Todd or Chanda and organize our website materials. So we spent another thirty minutes sending and receiving email, finished our lattes and left.
The walk back through downtown Patras included some steep city streets filled with commerce and construction to widen and strengthen streets to support this commerce. The window displays in many of the shops reminded us that it was Christmas time. I'm wondering if we'll make it home for Christmas. That seems to be the plan anyhow. Some of our crew wants to be home for New Years so I think we're aiming to arrive by Christmas so at least New Years will be a reality. We still have a long way to go to get to England. Yesterday I spent some time in our Athens hotel and began making the shipping arrangements to get the Land Rovers from England to New York. Special thanks to Blair Peterson and Daniel Oppenheim for their assistance and recommendations with shipping companies. It looks as though there is a ship leaving Southampton, England that might arrive in New York on December 21st.
All in all the day seemed pretty dull. That is until it took an entirely different turn. Once back at the dock we found the rest of the gang near the Rovers, waiting for our ship to load. Todd was playing the guitar but eventually stopped when it was time to send the vehicles through customs. I wanted to take a team photo with the Land Rovers in front of the ship but the vehicles had to be moved to make this happen. Todd wasn't into it and if you look at the picture we took, well, it really shows. Moments later I hopped in Alaska and Todd in Hercules bound for the customs building one kilometer away. Alaska took the lead and quickly came up to an intersection with a shipyard access the road that was blinded by a parked truck. In fact, the entire area was one huge yard of blacktop with vehicles driving wherever they pleased, similar to an airport tarmac. I stopped fast as the view beyond the truck exposed the road and an oncoming truck. I spied the truck but decided there was enough time to make the turn. Todd, on the other hands was following close and blind behind me. He was unable to see the approaching vehicle as he extended Hercules out into the intersection and directly in the path of the semi. The semi was traveling very fast and, although he must have seen Todd, the truck driver made no attempt to slow down. I watched in my rearview mirror as T-Bone Borgie gunned it through the intersection but the old Rover wasn't fast enough to get out of harms way. The left front bumper of the semi clipped Hercules' rear bumper and, in a very unusual way ripped the rear bumper out 90 degrees, tipping the Rover up on it's right-front wheel! Todd's head slammed against the B-pillar door-frame as he struggled with the steering wheel to set the Rover down. To this day, he's the only person I know who has driven a Land Rover on one wheels. We all came to a screeching stop and a well-shook up group soon came together to see if everyone was ok and inspect the damage. We exchanged insurance information with the truck driver. My initial impression was that the entire accident was Todd's fault but moments later I smelled alcohol on the truck drivers breath. I looked the driver a different way now without concealing my suspicions and he became real nervous. Then I recalled how fast he was going and the fact that he didn't slow up until after the impact. Yep, the sauce was definitely a factor in this equation. In Todd's defense, all he could see was a parked truck and, in the absence of road signs he proceeded to follow into harms way. There were so many things going through my mind that, for the next five minutes I was pretty angry.
Chanda and I drove the trucks onto the ship. Once parked and locked we headed upstairs to find the others. We found Doug walking around taking a personal tour of every deck. Jeff wasn't far behind, with the video camera, filming Doug's every move and inserting some Okubo commentary now and then. None of us knew where Todd was however so we spread out and searched for him. While looking I only knew that wherever he was, he was probably feeling pretty low. As for me, well I was feeling a mixture of things. I couldn't help but be upset as I looked over the Land Rover and saw the brand new rear cross member on Hercules, bent outward 90 degrees. The left rear lamp lens was cracked and it happens to be one of those unobtainable lenses made of a combination red/clear plastic that sell for over $150 if and when you can find them. But luckily the damage was local to the rear bumper area, centimeters away from a full propane tank, and thank God Todd was ok. I had good reason I suppose to be upset. After all, Todd was in zombie mode. He wasn't paying attention and he was an angry man before he got behind the wheel. In his emotional state, he probably shouldn't have been driving. But another side of me kept reminding myself that Todd was seconds from what could have been a very bad outcome. A couple minutes after the accident I realized this and immediately came out of my selfish stupor and decided to suppress the anger, and instead I did my best to muster up sympathy and understanding for Todd.
An accident is sometimes enough to send a man into a psychological tailspin and, in Todd's case, for a variety of reasons, he may have been heading there anyway. It's pretty easy to distinguish a real friend from a fake one in times like this and quite honestly, I had to bite my lip to keep the anger in check so I wouldn't antagonize his situation. I suppose it was at that moment that I learned a personal lesson about friendship and soon after that, the rage went away in favor of just plain happiness that he was alive and not physically injured. Todd got off with a warning and Hercules got off with another purple heart merit badge. Like I said, the outcome could have been much worse.
Chanda and I were the first to find him. Chanda expressed that she was happy he was ok and then headed up to the bar to meet tell the others, leaving Todd and I alone to work out our latest confrontation. As I had figured, I found him in a disconnected state of emotions. After such a close call with death, I did my best to reassure him that a Land Rover is just a thing and I wouldn't hold it against him. I'm still not sure what was going through his mind that day on the ship while he was sitting by himself in coach class so I just tried to reassure him. We talked for a bit, I repeated my reassurances and after a while, he finally came around. I headed off to the bar and Todd said that he wanted to stay behind for a bit. Eventually though he came out of his shell and moseyed upstairs to meet us. Together, our group threw back a few Greek cold ones and reunited in celebration. We spent the rest of the evening was spent cruising around the ship in the middle of the night, gorging ourselves with sausage and bread. Take a look at Doug's bread eating antics in today's pictures.
Later, I reflected on the little kids who came out of nowhere that morning to give us Land Rover stickers. Meeting them took only a few seconds. Perhaps these seconds were meant for Todd, for without them he might not be with us right now. No sir, I do not believe in coincidence.
