Back-alley Moscow

Behind Gasheka St. #8, between 4 and 5 pm, Dec. 31, 2004

Back in the saddle

What a relief to sit down at the keyboard and blog again. Since my last post from DC nearly two weeks ago, we returned to Moscow on schedule, and I found myself promptly buried in work. Many thanks to those of you who continued to visit Scraps and even leave comments during my period of absence - those comments are in part what inspired me to fire up the wi-fi and return to the keyboard this evening. I am going to respond to a couple of comments (in the comments sections, of course!) and perhaps update the blogroll and recently read books list a bit, then hopefully I'll still have time for a more involved post before falling asleep - there have been a few things on my mind since returning from the US and I would like to get them up here before the memories get too stale.

Home again (briefly)

A quick post from rainy DC, where we are spending a brief 2 1/2 days before heading back to Moscow. It always feels like there's a rush when we're here - to see everyone we want to see and do all the errands we need to do before leaving - and this time is no different. I am able to blog straight from my laptop while reclining on a couch thanks to a generous neighbor of my Mom's who has not password-protected his/her home wi-fi network. OK, off to another busy day of appointments and fun - more impressions about this trip will appear in this space soon (since I know you can't wait).

On the road again

We are now on our way back from Ft. Myers Beach, Florida, to Washington, DC (we are in the States for a two-week vacation, in case you're wondering what happened to all the posts about Moscow), and it looks like this time we'll be making the drive in two days as opposed to the three days it took us to get down there (OK, so we spent most of the first day of that trip at the Potomac Mills outlet mall). Never mind that two years ago when we took the same trip I was somehow able to drive the 1100 miles (according to Mapquest, it's 1072 miles. Just another reminder that, as the Russians say, starost' - ne radost' (loosely translated as "getting old(er) is no picnic" - more literally as "old age is no joy").

Our trip down this year was actually more like 1180 miles, thanks to our detour in South Carolina and another one the next day to see historic St. Augustine, Florida, and it was full of Americana. We saw mall walkers at Potomac Mills, lots of snowbirds headed down to Florida in their RV's (recreational vehicles, for the non-American readers) after having Christmas and New Year's at home up north, and plenty of Waffle House diners as we moved further south. We also saw quite a bit of hurricane damage in central Florida as we crossed the state on Routes 70, 78, and 80, and a couple of prison gangs (not true chain gangs, although I guess they may have been shackled - it's hard to see much more than the "State Prisoners Working" sign and the guard brandishing the shotgun when you drive by at highway speed) at work cleaning up litter alongside the highway in Florida and just south of Lumberton, NC. Perhaps my favorite moment was when we got the high-beam flash, a universal (well, at least in the US and in the former USSR) signal to watch out for police ahead, from an oncoming trucker north of Jacksonville, Florida, and luckily took heed of his warning and slowed down - cresting a hill we saw four officers on police-issue Harley-Davidson motorcycles, three of whom had already pulled over speeding motorists - the fourth one could have been ours. When we finally arrived at Grandma's house in Ft. Myers Beach, we were just glad to have made it in one piece.

Tonight we are staying at the Comfort Inn in Dunn, North Carolina - we drove until we found a Comfort Inn because we really appreciated the free wi-fi when we stayed at one on the trip down - without it, I wouldn't be able to blog these words...

It looks like this trip is going to be the opposite of my trip last fall to St. Petersburg, at least as far as the blog is concerned. After that trip, I had pictures posted quickly, but the full story of the trip itself took longer. With this trip, it seems to be the other way around - it will probably take me some time to go through all of the pictures I've taken in the last week and select the highlights to be posted here. Anyway, we are supposed to be driving the remaining 400 or so miles back to DC tomorrow, so I need to go to sleep now and rest up for the road ahead.

Sharp objects?

I know this is a strange post and chronologically out of place, but I can't understand why, after going through stringent security at the Frankfurt airport to board our flight to DC on January 1, we were given metal cutlery with our dinner on board the plane:



See, this bothered me enough that I even took a picture of it. It didn't bother me because I think it made anyone less safe - when I boarded a plane the week after Sept 11 and was asked if I had any sharp objects, I told them I had pens and keys, and I still think those items are potentially more dangerous weapons than nail clippers, so the whole "sharp object" restriction is not applied very logically, in my opinion. And I was allowed to board in Frankfurt with metal collar stays (as I looked for an explanatory link, I found this well-designed page that's funny because it is selling something I didn't know I needed), which set off the metal detector but were not checked for sharpness. It just bothered me to go through the whole security rigamarole and then see that Lufthansa was giving every passenger something that none of them would have been allowed to bring on board themselves.

One more from the road

OK, we need to get rolling - I can't spend the whole morning blogging, and I want to try out the Comfort Inn's free continental breakfast before it's too late. We are going to try to hit St. Augustine, Florida, today, before heading to our final destination - Grandma's house in Ft. Myers Beach, FL.

We took some time out of our route to circle back on this slow-moving truck after passing it on I-95 yesterday, and were rewarded with a photo of it right by Pedro's South of the Border (off to the left in the photo, it's an all-American institution which should make Americans scratch their heads - I won't begin to try to explain it to my Russian readers right now, although I may edit this post later).


Near the North/South Carolina border on
Interstate 95, around 3:30pm, Jan 4, 2005

Click on the photo to expand it and see this trucker's patriotic messages.

On the road

We got off the Interstate (I-95 does get old) briefly around Summerton, SC, yesterday. I took a bunch of pictures, trying Lorina's patience severely, which I'll try to put together into an essay-type post, maybe once we're back home in Moscow.


Near Summerton, SC, around 2pm, Jan 4, 2005.

Hometown

Before getting on the road to Florida, we spent a hectic day in DC. Happily, that day included breakfast at a cafe in Adams Morgan. While our breakfast was being cooked, I took a walk around and took a couple of pictures.


18th & U Sts., NW, around 11am, Jan 2, 2005

In response to reader demand...

...a picture of me and Lorina, hanging out in our apartment with a good friend of ours - President Putin giving his New Year's address to the nation at around 11:57pm on Dec. 31.



PS - blogging this from the road, using the free wi-fi at the Brunswick, GA, Comfort Inn. All times on this blog are local.

And one last time...

Happy 2005 to everyone one last time! This little snowman represents us fleeing Russia for 2 weeks in the States. We arrived in DC yesterday and are taking a day to deal with jet lag and see a couple of close friends before starting the drive down to Florida tomorrow morning.


[Credits to be posted when we're back in Moscow]