Just outside of Ceske Bodojovice (which is pronounced Chess’-kay Boo-doh’-vich) in what is now called the Czech Republic, the road I’m traveling on loses its right to be called a road any longer. The track, it’s not even that, it’s more like a path a pack of mules might take, this track has done something I never would have believed could happen.

It splits into a perfect ‘Y’, and I mean EXACTLY in two.

I’ve been following this road for eighty kilometers now, an experiment of sorts. Having left the glorious capital city of Prague I decided rather than follow the main road into Austria I’m gonna take this lonely excuse of a road, forgetting of course that even main roads in eastern Europe are sorely inadequate.

And on top of that, I’m attempting to accomplish this journey by driving by the light of the moon. And this is where it’s taken me; way, way back in time.

There’s an old Robert Frost poem about what I’m doing. What brought it to mind was that in the poem, there’s actually a ‘Y’ mentioned in the road, and the same thing has happened to me. I see that upon reflection it’s not so much the ‘Y’ itself as the way the poem ends.

Stumbling upon it, as I stumble upon most everything, it defines my philosophy of travel.

My travel habits fall into the category of the profanely unorthodox - heavy on the profane - but defining it with those poetic words, it kinda has the ring of class. Yeah, class.

On with the journey. Thus far, there’ve only been a couple of instances of wrong turns as I drive through several smallish towns. (Wait, they’re also too small to be called towns, we’ll call them dot-like speck formations of urban-like areas scattered across the blanched surface of, well, nowhere). But I’ve developed a no-fail system. By zeroing the tripometer and counting off the kilometers whenever I screw up I’ve been able to reverse my direction without getting lost when I have to turn back and go back the different way.

Devilishly, psychotically brilliant. You might say classy.

Thus far. But this ‘Y’ is something else, I’ve not a clue which way to go. Worse yet, leading up to the ‘Y’, the road had wound around so much I lost any idea of which direction I was even trying to go.

Finally the inspiration comes. I’m left handed, so I choose left.

Spurred on by yet another methodical logic-driven decision, off I go. The road snakes in every direction, loses its ancient cobblestone footings, regains them - and finally loses them again for good. A lonely, dusty, dirty, shitty road. As a matter of fact, it looks as though I might get lost trying to get back to that original evil ‘Y’ that started all this. I travel down this direction exactly twenty-one kilometers and the road finally comes to an end.

I’m right smack in front of a farmhouse built way back in the 17- or 1800's out of mud and straw and whatever else they used when they didn’t have shit to build with. No turn-off, no signs, no shoulder, no more road. I’ve been traveling this whole time on something the ancients would describe as ‘Willy’s Barn’s Road’, or as they would probably say, Villy’s Bern Road.

But wait, to top it off, the moon has deserted me and now it’s pitch black and there’s no way to even turn around. It’s been a lively experiment thus far, and it has taken a definite turn for the worse. Now I get to reverse my direction to go back downhill and reset the tripometer to zero. If I get lost again I’ll have to perform a differential equation in order to find my way back to the second lost point and then again to the original ‘Y’ which may also turn out to be a lost point. But panic has yet to set in; I’m still under the impression that I’ll make it. This was the very reason that I chose this route at this ungodly hour anyway, just to see exactly how classy I react under circumstances like these.

Shit, shit, shit, shit.

Exhausting all my skills just by turning around I retrace the twenty-one clicks which takes just short of an eternity, then take the right half of the ‘Y’ and I’m merrily back on my way. No shit.

Forty kilometers later, a whole adventure behind me lacking only the fun and good times and all those things a stress-free vacation should offer I reach the border and realize I ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

SOMEWHERE NEAR WULLEWITZ

I don’t dare move. An AK-47 machine-gun or some-thing just as scary is trained on me. It’s two-sixteen in the morning and the experiment has taken me to the middle of one of the most frightening, exhilarating experiences of my life. It’s almost as if I don’t mind the machine gun. I figure the two border guards are just doing their jobs and I don’t even think about exercising any of those overrated western civil rights I possess (which I realize without question I do not).

My travels down from the grand tour of Ceske Bodojovice’s antiquated farmhouses have taken me right to a forgotten little unknown, unused southern border crossing of the Czech Republic and Austria.

I’m sure I’m the first guy at night to pass through this border in the 90’s and these guards are thinking that this American guy traveling by himself thinks he’s in the middle of Deerhunter II, smuggling bags of heroin taped against the hairs of his crotch. They don’t even begin to speak English, and once again I default to my ignorant, lost American (this time without effect, even though I’m damned good at it) and then try talking in my struggling, broken awful German.

They’re not buying any of it.

All my belongings packed in my duffel bags laying harmlessly in the back seat are thrown onto the hood of my car. They’re opened and very, very thoroughly checked. The older of the guards is calmly staring me down from behind his machine gun. Fortunately he’s not the young cocky one, but he quite naturally seems like a guard at two in the morning wondering what the Hell this American fool is doing on a dusty back road near Wullewitz.

The other one though, is a little bit on the unstable side.

It’s not hard to figure out that the crazy one really, really wants to find some drugs or some other contraband. He looks hopped up himself. The ferocity in which he searches under and behind the seats and then in the trunk of my rental car is almost amusing. Almost amusing. Then a petrifying fear dawns on me. What if he gives up searching and stashes something himself? Then he can rediscover the great drug find and be declared a hero by the other security guard grunts and be the star of all Wullewitz for weeks to come.

Worse yet, if he plants something then I’ll have to bribe him to get the Hell out of the mess that he’s put me into. Then he’ll shoot me for bribing him. Paranoia or not, that’s how the mind works at two in the morning.

Something has to give, and strange as it seems, a curious answer presented itself.

Enough is enough. I’m finally getting impatient after thirty minutes of this shit. Now, maybe thirty minutes is not really that long of a time for a car and a body to be searched by gunpoint, but they’ve certainly made their point.

They are in control.

But wait, the psycho one has seen too many Czech cop movies and wants to pull the tires off the car to inspect the wheels for Baggies of drugs. By now, the plot has lost any resemblance to rationality and I finally realize that he is now merely trying to intimidate me with that one irrefutable force of nature.

Inconvenience.

I definitely smell a bribe coming, the very bi-product of inconvenience. However, the gun-toting guard (the sane one, I think) now looks as bored as I am, and just as cold. I’ve been standing outside for long enough and I walk inside their little guard shack and sit down, and have the audacity to wave to the bored guy to join me. This is too much for the young, crack-head inspector who now gestures for me to pull the tires off myself. Hah! I feign ignorance and remain sitting inside.

He stands there paralyzed for a second. If he asks me again I’ll see if he understands English in its purest form by flipping a bird at him.

Alas, a short, animated conversation between the two guards follows with me still inside the shack. I’m in no hurry, they can work out in the cold as long as they want to, I don’t give a shit. I’m not hiding anything, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to help.

The sicko one has lost. He comes in with my passport, slams down my exit stamp thirty-three minutes after the entry stamp and motions me away, still with that strange look of Terminator III excitement in his eyes.

He realizes immediately he’d screwed up and forgot to extract a substantial bribe from me. As I drive away, I see by his face he’s already changed the story of tonight’s late-night encounter with the Godless, decadent American trying to pass on his watch. I can read the entire story from his expression. He’ll tell his grandchildren about busting down the vast American drug smuggling ring single-handedly and saving the Fatherland from the lying, deceitful West from corrupt, depraved Americans.

Just look at me.