Requesting Greenland

In the winter of 1989, I rendezvoused with Mike Hattrup, a skier of some renown, in Munich at the giant skiing trade show known as ISPO. From ISPO we went directly to a beer hall and then to a restaurant, or maybe it was a restaurant and then a beer hall, and a few hours later we boarded a train that would take us to Austria, except that as we were in the middle of loading, the doors slid closed and the train began to pull out of the station with one set of skis still on the platform. This was a crisis of existential proportions. Not knowing what else to do, I slammed my palm on the red emergency button. Alarms rang and the train ground to a halt. Almost immediately, a cop was in my face, threatening in German and English to throw me in jail. I pleaded ignorance and did my best to appear contrite, while behind him Mike quietly slipped the ski bag onto the train. Only when the officer realized he was scrambling national railway timetables did he relent and let me go.