You are looking at a manmade canal in Fort Borscht, Russia.
Fort Borscht is part of the Dashov-Fort Borscht Metroplex of about 6 million people.
Dashov is the bigger of the two main towns in the D/FB Metroplex.
Fort Borscht, from its founding, had a sort of inferiority complex regarding the more famous, more cosmopolitan city to its east.
While Russia was part of the Soviet Union, run by the communists, Fort Borscht came up with all sorts of schemes to try and outshine its Dashov neighbor.
During the Stalin years the Soviets liked to build big projects, sometimes of dubious merit.
In an attempt to control the flooding of the Trinitov River, as it flowed through Fort Borscht, enormous dikes were built.
The dikes worked. Fort Borscht suffered no bad flooding after the dikes went up in the 1950s.
About a decade before the collapse of communism, Fort Borscht came up with its goofiest scheme ever to try and make the town into a special place. Fort Borscht's town commissars came up with a plan to re-do the Trinitov River, making canals, a lake and a palace for the commissars. The plan was named The Fort Borscht Trinitov River Vision to Make Fort Borscht The Envy Of The World.
The communists liked to give long names to their plans. The plan became known by its acronym, FBTRVTMFBTEOTW, which is pronounceable in Russian, but looks ridiculous in English.
The FBTRVTMFBTEOTW plan was presented to the Supreme Soviet in Moscow, pushed by Politiburo member, Kasha Grangerovobich, a native of Fort Borscht.
In the Soviet Union, the Soviets could initiate enormous public works projects without that nasty impediment to progress we have in the United States of America, known as a public vote. In the Soviet Union all property belonged to the people. And since the people, in theory, were the state, the state, as in the Soviets, could take people's property for whatever they wanted it for.
Unlike America.
Where you can only do such a thing if you use the lawful practice known as eminent domain. Which can only be used to take property when it is for the greater public good. Like building a school, a road, a water treatment plant, a dam, an airport, that type thing.
In the Soviet Union, the communists could take your land for anything they wanted, to build a sports stadium, a mall parking lot or even to build an un-needed lake and flood diversion channel, that the Soviet people did not want, did not need, and did not vote for.
Which is what part of the FBTRVTMFBTEOTW plan was. To build an un-needed flood diversion channel. And take down those Stalin era dikes on the Trinitov River. In the Soviet's, un-democratic system, plans and ideas were not publicly debated, as to their merit. Hence some really big mistakes were made in the Soviet Union.
Unlike here, in most parts of America. Where the people rule. Or try to.
So, the FBTRVTMFBTEOTW plan was funded by the Politburo. Initially it was to cost only 300 million rubles. But soon the price skyrocketed to over a billion rubles, with monorails and the world's biggest manmade surfing beach added to the FBTRVTMFBTEOTW plan.
As was the case with most Soviet projects, this project was top heavy with bureaucracy. Kasha Grangerovobich used her political influence, in the Politiburo, to have her drunken, ne-er-do-well son, Ivan Davidich Grangerovobich, installed as the FBTRVTMFBTEOTW project's project manager, even though he had no experience in such things.
Such was the way the old Soviet Union was run. Nepotism was not in the Soviet vocabulary. Can you imagine the same thing happening in America? Some American politician finagling funds for some fool project and then getting her son installed to run it? The public outrage would be deafening.
So, I.D Grangerovobich took over Fort Borscht's biggest project in its history. And proceeded to have fun spending money on fact finding junkets to other Soviet cities to study their rivers. I.D. even took his crew of fact finders out of the country, to Venice, to study the canals.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, and some of the Soviet era wrong doers were brought to justice, as records were made public and the new government investigated some of the Soviet shenanigans, the Fort Borscht FBTRVTMFBTEOTW project erupted into a national scandal in Russia.
It was learned that I.D. Grangerovobich had been squandering millions of rubles on junkets, cars, fancy offices and liquor. It was revealed that I.D. frequently took weekday trips to neighboring Dashov, ostensibly on business trips with one of his assistants, which actually was lunch, with a lot of drinks, which often ended on a bed in a suite in an expensive Dashov hotel.
Very little, if any, work was ever done on any of the big junkets I.D. took his crew on. The junkets quickly turned into party time.
As the FBTRVTMFBTEOTW project spun out of control, the escapades grew ever more goofy. At one point I.D. bought 100s of inner tubes. And a bus. And arranged to have an Inner Tubing Happy Hour floating down the icy cold Trinitov River.
Icy cold was the Trinitov's only problem, otherwise it was a pristine, clean, crystal clear, unpolluted river, that looked inviting to go floating in. If it weren't so darn cold.
The FBTRVTMFBTEOTW project collapsed soon before the Soviet Union collapsed. A big mess was left for the post-Soviet, Russian government to clean up. All that remains of the FBTRVTMFBTEOTW project is a canal and the world's biggest artificial surfing beach,. Which not many Fort Borschtites use, even though I.D., in his booze addled lunacy, thought it'd give all the town's citizens the opportunity to go surfing.
After the Soviet Union's collapse I.D.s mom, Kasha Grangerovobich, was arrested and charged with crimes against the people.
I.D. Grangerovobich managed to escape to the West, where he eventually took up residence in Fort Worth, Texas, leaving his wife and two kids behind in Russia, but bringing his assistant to America with him.
I.D. Grangerovobich has no obvious means of support, but he appears to be living quite well in Fort Worth. It is suspected he made it out of Russia with a lot of rubles.
