Goooooo!!!

October 3, 2025

Not much of a dispatch today because, well, stuff. But since yesterday I said that the cabbies in Trenčín are a mine of storytelling gold (you’ll see), I thought to continue that trend. Tonight I had a few, uh, beers with new friend Dušan. He, ever so graciously, decided to wait with me while my cab arrived. Tonight’s chauffeur was Dávid. On the app, it said to look out for a gold Škoda. There was even a little avatar of this gold encrusted vehicle to help me in spotting my chariot. Exciting, I thought — I have never been in a gold painted car before — yet I also anticipated that, more than likely, any cab painted gold just ought to be ripe for a narrative extravaganza. I licked my lips in anticipation.

I said to Dušan: “a gold car!”

He replied: “Ack, that’s Dávid. Everyone in Trenčín knows it’s not a gold car.”

“But the avatar,” I said. “See?” I helpfully showed him the little picture of, okay, maybe not a gold car, but certainly piss-coloured.

“You’ll see,” Dušan said.

Dávid arrived. It was not a gold car. In fact, I couldn’t even stretch the lie that it might have been, maybe, yellow — not even the aforementioned piss-coloured — this was a car so far removed from gold, it was just, simply, a normal coloured car, about as average of a paint colour that I don’t even need to say what the real colour was because you’ll know what colour it is. And I don’t even think it was a Škoda.

“Told you,” said Dušan. He sauntered off, satisfied of his intense local knowledge. Turning around, he shouted down the road: “LIAR!” Then cackled.

True, Dušan, true. It’s not even close. What a strange thing to fib about. Would I be so impressed that I might be potentially getting a lift in a gold car that when the real deal showed up that that gold-hued excitement would overwhelm my disappointment? What was Dávid thinking. I got in, anyway. For a split second I thought to get in the front; he must be a legend. Instead, I opted for my usual slot in the teeny wedge between front and back seat, aligning my body perfectly as if I was sliding the titanium parts of a nuclear weapon together, the tolerances so precise that any slight misalignment could prove fatal.

Dávid drove fast. Very fast. So fast, in fact, that he missed the roundabout exit that takes me to my street. Twice. Žabinska! I shouted. He nodded. We zoomed around for a third time; three times lucky. We were spinning so quickly my face was splotched against the side window as if I was an experiment in a centrifuge, practicing for a rocket-fuelled descent to Earth. For a moment, I became astronaut Gus Grissom who gives a fist-pumping “Goooooo!!!!” to his comrade Gordo Cooper as he’s launched into space in the film the Right Stuff (minute 1:52 in the video below… it’s worth it; this has been in my head since I was about 12 years-old).

But eventually Dávid, in his not-gold taxi, found the right exit, and with it, my ride was over. He sped off, onto the next unsuspecting character probably thinking: “I got a gold car!”