Road trippin'

These past couple of days, my daughter is on the road, driving almost 800 miles solo, from sunny California all the way to sunny Utah and Park City. Thinking of it made me reminisce the magic side of all the road trips I also took alone when I was a young man, a few stood out in my mind.

I particularly remembered that month of June 1973 when I drove less than 400 miles, that is half of my daughter drove in two days, from my hometown of Montriond, in the French Alps all the way to Murnau, in Bavaria. On the way, I stopped in Wolfurt, Austria, the home of Doppelmayr skilifts, where I met Walter Frois, one of the two Mount Buller ski school directors in Australia.

I eventually landed in Murnau where I found a job as waiter for a while at a local restaurant. My goal was to learn German, which I did, but this first stint didn't quite suffice as I hit the road alone two more times to Tübingen, Germany where I polished a bit more that particular linguistic skill...