Day 14	Metz to Strasbourg to home
	or, the fighting Frenchmen

[Random images from the Scotland trip at this page] Awakened by the sunshine at about 9am, I continued my trip home. I headed straight to Strasbourg as this promised the shortest way in case the car was to break down. Just before the French/German border in Strasbourg a pedestrian and a motorist were involved in a fist fight at an intersection. While I missed the beginning, the show was rather impressive and Mike Tyson would have been pleased given the quality.

The car behaved very nicely at about 120km/h and so I tried to maintain that speed as much as I could. Once in Germany this of course meant that I was in the right lane almost all of the time and could enjoy the sight of others zooming by in the left lane at speeds around 200km/h. Usually I am in the left lane, but with this car I was glad to be on the Autobahn at all.

I finally arrived home at about 18h. The final driving kilometers were the most fun as they were over some extremely steep and winding roads which are around my town, and the car sincerely disliked anything other than straight lines. Once home I simply put the car into the garage and after taking a long & thorough bath went to bed. That was a very welcome change after a couple of weeks in a sleeping bag!

Just for those who were wondering: the problem was the front right drive shaft which simply broke. Now hanging free and moving around with each revolution of the wheel it of course created major noises and tensions when steering. Since the front differential had no resistance from the right side a normal car would have stopped immediately; the 4WD at least used 50% of the power for the back wheels and so I came home with half propulsion, so to speak. The car was fixed in 2 days after the spare piece was ordered, at a price of about $500. Not that bad after all -- would go again!

Email Stan