My short stories of previous events in my life.
What is standing in a puddle of water with red legs?Due to a maximum of 4000 letters it comes in parts.
Part one.
It was one of these days, you wake up and don´t really know if you are going through with it.
Pure group pressure makes you slowly, very slowly crawl out of the bed and attack the alarm clock.
Why oh why did I promise to go on this trip!
After a breakfast consisting of some orange juice and a Danish left over from yesterday the packing started.
15 minutes later all ready to go standing in the rain 4 am an early April morning
45 wet minutes later my friends show up. “where the hell have you been” I shouted.
“Oh well, it was this old man with a hat who was in front of us” said Jimmy, the instigator of this trip.
Peter the third member of the ragged group had his head entangled in the seatbelt sleeping deeply.
Probably because of the slow motion.
After tossing my stuff in the already full trunk we got on our merry way.
Now when the hat man was out of the way we manage to pick up time and a lot of bugs and one poor bird.
8 hours and a few piss stops later we where in the country of my breakfast.
Back then you had to take a ferry and also go through customs.
This always created debate with customs officers if it was illegal to bring in several thousands of fly babies.
The look on people’s faces when they searched our stuff and found the maggots was always hilarious.
With a reprimand consisting of “Never do this again” of we went in search of the endangered species that we had travelled so far to find.
After some island jumping finally we reached our first target.
Standing at the shore we gazed upon the small island out in the bay about 200 meters offshore, realising that a boat would have been good to bring along.
Lucky enough we had a chart and it stated that the depth was not great.
So burdened down, we stumbled our way across the shallows, tripping now and then on the algae covered stones.
What 20 minutes of icy water does to you lower extremities any one can figure out.
“Now what” I said. “We have to go to the other side of the island, that´s where the ponds are” said Jimmy.
“You go first” he said looking kind of mysterious.
Not thinking much about it I was happily strutting away picking up body heat and having my face buried in the map.
A short distance in to the pretty dense woods I hear a very heavy sigh to my right.
I don´t know who was most surprised me or the Buffalo.
Staring at each other from 2 meters away for what felt like an eternity.
I managed not to bow my head in respect and slowly retreated.
My friends for some reason had abandoned their stuff and was trying to break the land speed record getting back to the shore.
After catching up I put on my fearsome face and asked Jimmy what was going on.
He had failed to inform us upon the fact that this island was a game reserve and they had brought a heard of Buffalos in the late 1800s to this island.
Causing it to be sparsely visited.
Comments (3)
When I was 16 I started working as a mailman in a nearby suburb to Stockholm.
I used to bicycle back and forth to work.
It was about 40 km round trip.
In the wintertime, if there were not much snow on the lake it was quicker to ride on the ice even though it was longer.
It was a good job to have when you liked to fish a lot like I did, because you were finished early.
One warm spring day I was riding my bike back home but decided take a detour across the lake, to se if I could watch some Pike spawning in a small creek that ran out in the lake.
When I got closer to the creek I saw that the mouth and about 100 meters around were ice free.
I parked my bike at the edge of the open water and managed to find a spot to go ashore.
I started walking up the creek looking for fish and there where some.
Knowing that about 2km upstream there was a waterfall that prevented the fish to swim further upstream I started to walk there.
After a while I decide I had seen enough and headed back to the bike.
Upon arrival I noticed I had company.
Several fire trucks and cop cars.
Someone had seen the bike and thought that the owner had gone through the ice and drowned.
After a big debate with the fire captain about the sanity of retrieving His Majesties property the Post bike.
I started to wade out in the water and climbed up on the ice.
From behind I heard “We are not going to rescue you if something happens”.
Being 17 and immortal this did not concern me.
I jumped upon my back and merrily waved good bye.
It was a joy to ride the ice, so smooth and no snow at all. After about one km, just out of sight from the binocular equipped anxious firemen my bike just vanished under me.
For some reason, I think it was the big mail bag up front who broke the decent in to the depths, I didn´t fall in.
Slowly edging backwards, I grabbed hold of the rear wheel and managed to pull the bike up out of the water.
Being aware now of the colour of ice that didn´t support any weight, I zick-zacked back towards my side of the lake, which was the west side.
When I reached the shore I realized that where this morning was solid Ice now there was 30 meters of no ice at all.
The warm spring sun had melted it all.
All kinds of thought went through my head at this moment about what to do.
Going back to the arms of the firemen.
Spending the night on the ice waiting for it to freeze or just plain drowning.
Neither had any appeal on me.
After an internal debate I remembered that a bit North there was a sandy beach where the depths where not great.
When I reached my designated landing point to my despair the amount of open water was even greater. Not being a coward I decided to go for it. I backed up the bike and picked up as much speed as possible.
At the last split second I pulled up the handlebars to raise the front up in an attempt to avoid crashing head first in to the Icy cold water.
To my amazement I actually touched ground with water to my waist. Biking like crazy (if you ever road a bike under water, you know what I mean) I managed to reach the beach.
Feeling like I single handily concurred Normandy beach I could not resist giving out a scream of victory.
The rest of trip home was kind of cold but I didn´t care.
Next morning the ice was totally gone because of heavy wind, lucky for me I didn´t spend the night out there.
In my boat some friends and I went that day fishing.
Sorry to say I meet the firemen again that day because there was a tragic accident, my boat sunk in the storm and a friend drowned.
The firemen got confirmed I was raving mad.
Sad ending on an otherwise funny episode.
Buffalo ? I do love Danish pastries and would have made a coffee and had the Danish pastry and made up a 'political ' lie for an excuse not to go.
AN interesting story. Your english is very good as I've already said, it is Herd of Buffalo, I am simply telling you that as i realise english is not your first language. My spelling and punctuation is awful especially when I am on this small laptop. Sorry I ever bought it , too small. I have to wear glasses for reading now. Age related I am told. I also think it is from reading so many books since a kid.
Have a good day.
I tmakes a nice change from politics.
I cycled all my life and rarely got public transport. I also ran every day for about an hour. The roads are so busy now means I don't cycle and I no longer run because of arthritis, I do walk alot though.
Going out now and it is lashing sleet. Nice to read a post that is not about politics for a change.