Chita, Siberia
Journey Index
Day 2 - NJ-Moscow
Day 2 Photos
Day 3 - Moscow-Chita
Day 3 Photos
Day 5 - Chita-ECLIPSE!
Day 5 Photos
Day 7 - Chita-Moscow
Day 7 Photos
Day 1
March 5, 1997
A loud voice is telling me that Jesus wants to help me with my burdens and give me everlasting life if I'll only wake up and follow him into the new day. I crack open my right eyelid and look for the source of this aversive message. The radio alarm says it's five o'clock in the morning. Jesus is still on his Mission; he's out to get me and reel me into the Flock. I too have a mission: turn off the radio before I toss my cookies. I believe in setting the alarm to the most annoying sounds possible which keeps me from drifting back to sleep after being brought into semi-consciousness by the radio. For me, there's nothing more annoying than evangelical Christians dredging the radio wastelands for Lost Souls. It does the trick, setting the alarm this way, because I'm on my feet with my finger poised, ready to silence this insistent religious propaganda with a deft stroke of the digit.
CLICK!
Silence.
I gather my wits and look around the room. It's still dark and not much registers in the blackness but I do see a dark mass on the floor which turns out to be my slippers. I slide my feet into them and head for the door to the room. Janet is still asleep, breathing quietly, apparently not in the least disturbed by the bellicose onslaught of the Radio Roundup a few moments earlier. I leave the bedroom and make my way downstairs and into the kitchen. As the coffee is brewing, I snatch my checklist from the kitchen table and review what needs to be done.
Let's see. I've got to purchase some film, get a haircut, pick up the visa, buy videotape, blah, blah, blah. Well, I've got a full day of driving to and fro ahead of me, that's for sure. I pour a cup of coffee and saunter over to the computer. I spend a few minutes making some last-minute changes to my web site while drinking my light brown liquid reinforcement. I shut down the computer and the room goes black. I look out the window and see the thin crescent of the moon above the eastern horizon. In five days, I'll be in Siberia, watching this moon slowly move across the face of the sun until my surroundings become as dark as the room I'm sitting in right now.
Entering the New York Camera store in Princeton, I'm greeted by the proprietor, ready to sell me anything I want, no doubt. After explaining that I'm going to photograph an eclipse and need filters and a telescopic lens, he rifles through a display and produces an off-brand 80mm-200mm zoom lens for the Nikon I'll be using. When he tells me the cost is only $35, I find it hard to believe; the Nikon lens I was interested in is nearly $300. "Does it work?" I have to ask at this price. "Oh, sure. It's a very solid lens. Try it," he responds. I mount the lens and walk to the storefront window, focusing on buildings along Nassau Street. As I focus on a woman walking toward me, I realize I know her. It's an old friend, Rita Seidel, whom I haven't seen for a couple of months. I tap on the window and she looks up, smiling. She enters the store and we embrace, performing a rapid-fire catch-up of our lives. It turns out that she was on her way to the camera store to pick up some photos she'd taken at a ball a few days earlier. Coincidence...
Rita leaves and, after testing the lens some more, I purchase it and leave as well. I cross the street, heading for my bank, when I run into another friend, Chris Vashantkumar. Chris is as surprised to see me as I am to find him here in the middle of the day. He's apparently heard that I'm off to Siberia through mutual friends and pumps me for details on the trip. We part and I'm off to the bank again.
I make it to the bank without further surprises and conduct my business with Bill Riddner, the world's greatest bank teller (to hear him tell it).
Jennifer is smiling somewhat triumphantly as I enter Edward's Travel Agency. She knows what a prolonged headache acquiring this visa has been and she also knows that I'm leaving in 30 hours for Russia.
All of the pieces to this puzzle appear to be in place and I sit down at the kitchen table and call John at his flat in Moscow. A woman's voice is on the other end of the phone. At first, I think it's Zoya, however, my English phrases are not answered directly and I suddenly realize that it's Katya, Zoya's daughter, on the other end of the line and after a clumsy greeting (my Russian is still not that good), I ask to speak to John. He's pretty excited about the possibility of seeing me, although he confesses that it still doesn't seem real to him. We chat for a bit, making arrangements for him to meet me at the airport and planning out some activities for my first night in Moscow.
Shortly before midnight, I fall asleep.
"...and are you ready to cross that bridge into Eternity?"
CLICK!
It's 4:30 a.m. and I'm on my feet again. I walk to the east window of the bedroom at look to the sky. Comet Hale-Bopp is glowing brightly, its tail pointing away from the sun which will be rising shortly. The crescent of the moon hangs in early morning sky, lower than yesterday. Four days. I'm going to Siberia tonight. This thought still seems unreal to me as I stand at the window of my house in central New Jersey. I go to the kitchen and make tea.
I dial John's number on the telephone and hear the familiar buzz of the Russian phone system on the other end. After a couple of rings, he answers. "I won't be able to meet you at the airport," he says. "Yeltsin's speech begins about an hour before you arrive so there's no way to get there in time." This isn't the best news to get first thing in the morning but it's not the end of the world either. I ask John if I should simply take some form of public transportation like a bus or taxi. "No way," he tells me. "I'll either send a driver from the office or have Zoya meet you at the gate," he says in an unsure voice. I explain to him that I don't have a problem dragging the baggage onto a bus and getting to the office, but he feels that having me try to navigate Moscow streets to find the office would be a Herculean task. "No worries," John says with a tad more conviction this time. "One way or another, somebody will meet you at the airport. Safe flight, OK?" I agree and put the receiver back in its cradle.
I make a second cup of tea and call Marina. She's very excited about my pending arrival and says that Victoria is asking her, almost hourly, when the American is going to be there. She asks when my flight will arrive in Chita. I don't know the answer to this as I won't be able to buy the ticket until I get to Moscow tomorrow. I explain that I will call her with that information when I get the ticket or I will have Zoya call her, depending on when the flight leaves Moscow. She wishes me a good flight and I hang up the telephone. I putter around the house a bit, listening to music.
I strap myself into the Honda and drive in the bright New Jersey morning to Le Photographic. This is really an incredible store, sporting every conceivable lends and attachment for any camera ever made. Also wonderful, is their selection of used gear. I'm looking for a motor drive for the Nikon when my eye catches a 500mm lens on the shelf. It calls out to me softly, "I'm for rent, buddy. Think of the images you'll be able to capture with me on your camera." Then, I realize it wasn't the lens that was speaking to me, but rather the salesperson. I tell him what type of Nikon I'll be using and he grabs a used one from the shelf and suggests I go outside and try it out. Wow. The magnification is spectacular and because of the mirrored optics, the lens isn't excessively long. I return to the store and tell the fellow that I'll rent it for a week. Out of curiosity, I ask him how much the used Nikon body would cost to rent. "Rent it?," he asks. "Why don't you just buy it? It's only $70."
I return home with my new Nikon camera.
Repacking the equipment bag is required again, as I've picked up a few extras. This is truly a jigsaw puzzle. The two black canvas bags are straining from the bulk of their load and it takes nearly an hour to get everything to fit efficiently into them. In the end, however, I succeed in having all the clothing and gear co-existing quite nicely together. I lug the bags into the dining room/staging area and prepare to take a shower, throw on some traveling clothes and finalize my preparations. I look at my watch. I'll be leaving home in an hour.
The hot water feels exhilarating and refreshing. I'm not one to burst into song while soaping up, but now I find myself humming Cat Stevens' Moonshadow as the New Jersey water beats my skin and slips down the drain.
I go to the bedroom where I've piled a heap of clothes on the dresser and select a few items. I notice that there's a large bulk at the bottom of the heap and so I remove the clothes to see what's there. I don't believe it....
The two-volume, Concise Oxford English dictionary that I purchased for Marina is sitting here. Oh, no!. Repacking the bags to include these monster tomes was not what I'd planned to be doing just now. How could I have missed these things? Feeling like a complete idiot, I grab the clothes and the dictionaries and make for the bags. It takes me nearly 45 minutes to figure out the combination necessary to get the books in place, but I do it. The baggage is now obscenely heavy as I drag it to the car.
Janet and I head out of the driveway about two hours before the flight's going to depart from Newark International Airport, an hour away.
The drive up the New Jersey Turnpike is uneventful and we arrive a lot sooner than I'd expected. Carrying the two mondo bags from Hell along with my carryon bag, I struggle through the lines to the check-in counter for Lufthansa. Passport, visa, ticket-everything's ready and in order. I receive the boarding pass and head toward the cafeteria. What a racket! The folks at Marriot must have a profit margin in the four-digit range! It costs nearly $10 for a cup of coffee and some chocolate pudding! Get a clue, you capitalist bastards! The coffee is too hot and tastes like the result of a fire after a flood in a fat rendering factory and the pudding feels and tastes like its mother was a styrofoam cup and its father was a recent roadkill on the Turnpike. Well, maybe it's just travel anxiety...
Janet and I exchange good-byes and I trundle through the security checkpoint and down the ramp to the gate. A group of singing girls proceeds me (sort of a high school rendition of A Chorus Line) and the sound is a pleasant alternative to the cheesy Musak that's being piped throughout the airport. I find a seat and wait. All around me, people are speaking German. Seems that a lot of folks are returning to Deutschland. After a brief wait, we're invited to board the flight to Frankfurt.
The take-off is as uneventful as the ride that that brought me to the airport. I peer out the window and watch the New Jersey landscape waft past. By the time we're over Connecticut, the sky is black and only pinpoints of radiance illuminate the continent below us.
This flight offers video monitors that slowly drop from the ceiling. It's interesting to watch all of them slowly descend throughout the plane and it reminds me of the final scenes in Steven Speilberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Roy Nearyis in the alien craft and the walls begin to unfold. One of the nifty things that Lufthansa offers is a video representation of where our flight is located geographically as well as data about the speed, air temperature, altitude and ETA of the flight. It's also an exercise in patience. That little white plane on the monitor moves v e r y s l o w l y. Watching the slow progress of our flight does help some of the time pass though. I put on my headphones, munch some of the fine cuisine (not joking here, it really is good), and watch Whoopie Goldberg in The Associate.
Somewhere over Nova Scotia, I fall asleep.
