Thrills, Spills and Chills

"The first thing we need to do," I said to the lads on Monday over lunch, "is to figure out exactly where this 'Dr. Oldschool' -  if indeed that is his name - is going to fire this supposed 'beam ray' from. If it's as cataclysmic as he makes it sound, it's gotta be pretty huge, and therefore a bit difficult to hide, surely?"

"Not necessarily," warned Clark. "It could be easily hidden in a mountain, or a volcano, or a very large building like the White House, for example. A building with a dome like that'd be ideal."

"It's not gonna be in the White House!" hissed Michael.

"I didn't say it was," retorted Clark. "I just said, LIKE the White House."

"Don't forget, it's gotta be near a river. Moon River, remember?"

Well, this went on for some time.

Meanwhile, I had a thought. I went to the bin and pulled an envelope out of the trash. Marching over to the table, I hollered at the guys, "Who's the idiot that forgot to put this in the recycle bin?!"

They stopped and stared. "That's brilliant, Jeff!"

"It is?"

"Yes," said Clark, "that's the envelope the letter came in. Check to see if there's a postmark!"

There was. In no time we were headed to Switzerland. Dr. Oldschool had mentioned skiing in his letter, so we were packed accordingly. 

Here's Michael in his usual ski attire.

And here's the three of us at one of Michael's "Pantsless Snowboarding" training weekends.

Naturally, along our journey to Switzerland we'd been studying all we could about the country and where a a giant moon-pulling ray beam thingumajig could be hidden.

"It'd have to be high ground," said Michael.

"Hence Switzerland. Hence skiing. Mountains. The Alps." Clark replied.

"Good job we're prepared for that" I added.

The others nodded in agreement.

As we parachuted down from our Unbelieva-Jet towards our secret safe house on the outskirts of Bern, I looked over at Clark and shouted, "This is so cool! Who needs airports, eh?"

"Yeah!" he replied. "I haven't even renewed my passport in twenty years! HAHAHAHAHA!!"

"HAHAHA!! Me either!"

We opened the hidden underground garage at our secret safe house and discovered the battery flat on our souped-up mountain-ready Yugo.

Two hot cylinders of throbbing power!

"I guess we DO need airports after all. We're gonna have to rent a car." said Michael.

We strapped on our snowshoes and lumbered into town to rendezvous with our pointman, Hertz Van Rentl, to see if he couldn't rustle us up a set of wheels, with big knobbly tires and some snow chains, and preferably some of those nice beaded sheepskin seat covers that give you a back massage.

Where were we headed? To the most obvious place, really. A place on high ground - at the top of a mountain, actually. And the perfect place for looking up at the heavens - an observatory, no less.

That's right, I'm talking about the Sphinx Observatorium, not far from the Eiger.

Like something straight outta James Bond.

Clark will let you know how we got on tomorrow (even though you know we succeeded, because the Moon didn't fall in a river on Friday, but what the hey...)