First snow, Wasilla

It's still dark when I leave the house. I brush off a thin layer of snow and sit down in the painfully cold car.

I can taste the reflux of acid as I drive the empty streets through Wasilla. This is way too early for me. But it's the first snow of the season and it had gotten into my head that I wanted to see what the Alaskans were up to.

I drive into an empty Shell station. It's Sunday, and I sit for a while and just watch. Everything is silence and neon.

I follow a couple of cars that eventually ends up in front of an enormous bowling hall. It's like a hangar. I suddenly find everything perplexing. The parking lot alone is absolutely enormous.

I turn the engine off and sits quietly in the car. I'm really trying to contemplate why anybody would want to go bowling at 9 am on a Sunday morning. It just doesn't make sense.

I'm about to pull out of the parking lot when I notice a high-heeled woman who leans conspicuously into a car. It's not a prostitute, I gather, not 9 o'clock on a Sunday morning and certainly not in a small town like Wasilla. But now she's got my attention and I'm lingering in the parking lot to see in which direction this is heading.

Then I slowly start to feel old and ridiculous. I reason with myself, and quickly butt out of the place.