Skip to primary content

Peninsula | Mar 01 2005

I wanted to visit a friend of mine (J), so I called him and he said “Okay I will be home in an hour’s time.” I went to his house, his girlfriend let me in, we talked etc. It took J nearly four hours to get home from the shop. He did not say why, but seemed stressed. Later he offered me a ride to the other side of the city. I had never been there, and he wanted to show me some nice place near the house where he lived as a kid. We drove past a building site, turned off the street, and followed a “road” along the river that no one had driven this winter. J said that the road or rather path led to the end of a peninsula in the river. The path was covered with thick snow and it was difficult to get further. At one point we had to drive up a small hill, but there was so much snow it was not possible. I wanted to tell J we should turn back, but J was so anxious to show me that special place that he convinced me to shovel all the snow off the slope. We made shovels by cutting a plastic can in two. After fifty feet or so we got stuck again. This happened three times more. First our feet got wet and then our wet pants froze. At one point the snow was so hard we had to use an ax to break it. When we almost reached the road we saw there was a steel fence in the way, so we had to push the car all the way back the way we had come. I was angry and exhausted. Then we drove to the center of town, near the President’s palace, and drank champagne, which for some reason was in the car. When J was drunk, he said he had something to tell me. I didn’t know what it could be. J was quiet for a long time before he said there was no special place, that he had made it up. I asked why but he said he didn’t know, it was just something that came to him.