We, yours truly, Leora Rosner of the Growing Air Foundation and Gordon Foat of Green MotorSport are Team 20 of the WAVE 2013. An interesting number considering the numerological value of 20 or rather 2 which is cooperation, team work, a force to be reckoned with, we are the GMS/GAF team.
On the 23rd day of June we left Woking and began the first leg of the WAVE, namely, getting there. Our ferry would leave at 13:55 and we needed to be there, in Dover, half an hour before departure. Fear not, our timing was impeccable, our boarding was impeccable and our eventual sea legs returned impeccably insuring us a gait of wide legged locomotion to accommodate the rocking of the boat. Doors slid shut one by one on the parking decks as we climbed the numerous levels to one of the top decks. There we stepped outside with a notion of sipping coffee while watching the waves and the gulls wheeling in the breeze. All this motion, all these waves are mere previews of the WAVE on the near horizon. The wind blew my hair into a veritable birds nest but the gulls must have known they would not be allowed entrance into the ferries eatery leaving the top of my head with the empty nest syndrome. Gravity played with Gordon’s feet as the channel gently bounced our mode of transportation. Thoughts of jumping up as the ferry dipped enhancing the height of the leap of faith coursed through his veins but hunger drew us both nearer to the cafeteria and its’ goodies. Before we knew it we were docking as a group of gesticulating deaf bikers pulled on their boots, jackets, kidney belts and backpacks. They looked like pirates from bygone days as they headed for their particular parking deck. As Gordon and I walked down to our parking level I silently wondered where the parrot had gone.
We began driving making a heading towards Salzburg. The French highways brought us to the Belgian highway as night closed in on us. Seeking an alternative form of entertainment we commenced to count the potholes. Long ones, short ones, shallow and deep pot holes and quite a few that were simply cauldron holes, fit to make enough soup for an entire platoon.
As we deftly avoided the pots and pans that make up the Belgian highway system I gazed up into the clouded sky and beheld a gray chefs hat with a majestic top slowly beginning to turn. Below it a small trunk began to develop small digits ready to pluck up chickens, cattle and cars, the three c's of this black ribbon of road on which we drove.
The turning chefs hat grew more timid with every minute that passed and finally gave up its quest to scare the hee bee jee bees out of us as well as leaving the three c's in a mood of disgruntlement for all had expected an unexpected joy ride the likes of which had never been recorded.
Striped roads of yellow and white, broken and solid create lanes, which looked as though they were designed for a child's tricycle and not for the many trucks that loomed up behind us with headlights ablaze in the night sky. They bore down on us like modern prehistoric monsters then passed us looking for better pickings. The Toyota hi-lux forerunner, our beast of burden, bravely hauled the trailer carrying the Peugeot iOn, a stickered exhibition of the sponsors supporting this epic journey leading us to the WAVE and the delivery of our message of the double edged sword against climate change. We, the intrepid knights astride the sat-nav steed drove a path straight as an arrow thru the rolling landscapes that make up Germany and Austria.
Our stomachs became kindred spirits growling their discontent while on a lower level the bladders of change sought comfort on the strangest experience of roadside toiletry ever witnessed. One must produce €0.70 cents to be deposited into a machine that spits out a brightly colored holographic imaged receipt returning €0.50 cents to be spent on a wild spree in the munchies department of the gas station. You enter the cubicle, do your business and then pass you hand in front of the tank, a robotic arm, like the last remnant of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s role in the Terminator begins to vomit a clear liquid when suddenly the toilet seat begins to spin and morph as it moves around the toilet rim leaving one gawking and hoping the door to the cubicle will set you free before all hell breaks loose.
The road awaits us as the night creeps into the arms of the rising sun, our eyes demanding to close shop regardless of all that is at stake. Our brains are preparing protest signs clubbing our bodies as we drop into fetal positions of twitch and snore when the hotel appears on a myopic horizon and we have arrived in Salzburg.
Striped roads of yellow and white, broken and solid create lanes, which looked as though they were designed for a child's tricycle and not for the many trucks that loomed up behind us with headlights ablaze in the night sky. They bore down on us like modern prehistoric monsters then passed us looking for better pickings. The Toyota hi-lux forerunner, our beast of burden, bravely hauled the trailer carrying the Peugeot iOn, a stickered exhibition of the sponsors supporting this epic journey leading us to the WAVE and the delivery of our message of the double edged sword against climate change. We, the intrepid knights astride the sat-nav steed drove a path straight as an arrow thru the rolling landscapes that make up Germany and Austria.
Our stomachs became kindred spirits growling their discontent while on a lower level the bladders of change sought comfort on the strangest experience of roadside toiletry ever witnessed. One must produce €0.70 cents to be deposited into a machine that spits out a brightly colored holographic imaged receipt returning €0.50 cents to be spent on a wild spree in the munchies department of the gas station. You enter the cubicle, do your business and then pass you hand in front of the tank, a robotic arm, like the last remnant of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s role in the Terminator begins to vomit a clear liquid when suddenly the toilet seat begins to spin and morph as it moves around the toilet rim leaving one gawking and hoping the door to the cubicle will set you free before all hell breaks loose.
The road awaits us as the night creeps into the arms of the rising sun, our eyes demanding to close shop regardless of all that is at stake. Our brains are preparing protest signs clubbing our bodies as we drop into fetal positions of twitch and snore when the hotel appears on a myopic horizon and we have arrived in Salzburg.
