Home again...

The transatlantic leg of the trip went off well, considering the plane was pretty much full and I had been assigned a seat one in from the aisle, toward the middle of the plane. Something I ate disagreed with me, and between the pressure in my stomach and the discomfort in my back that is the result of airline seat design, I never could get comfortable in my seat (until I happened upon placing the airline blanket under the back of my upper thighs, forward of my buttocks, at which point the pain at the base of my spine went away).

The line at immigration was pleasantly short and the wait for baggage was nominal (i.e., about 20 minutes), at which point I was waved through customs and handed my bags back to United in preparation for the flight to Durango. As with my previous trip, I had been ticketed only to Denver, so it took a few minutes for me to get my ticket home, and wouldn't you know it: with less than half an hour to get from the ticket counter to Concourse B, two stops down the line after getting through security, my ticket was spit out with a bunch of "S" characters at the bottom, which meant I had been randomly chosen for the more thorough TSA security search.

As it turned out, the lines at the conventional security checkpoints were long enough so that I was able to get to the train that runs between the terminal and the concourses a little faster than I would have otherwise, despite the additional time spent having TSA go through my stuff.

I got to Durango in due time, tired as anything (I think I only got a couple of hours of nap time since getting up at 3:30 am in Moscow), and was immensely pleased to find that both checked bags had been put on the plane with me. The ride home was routine, and I went to sleep fairly soon after getting home.

There's no respite for the slothful: I need to get cracking on a bunch of stuff.

Cheers...

Ulyanovsk redux...

As I posted Monday, I got up in time to say goodbye to the rest of the team as they headed out to the charter, and it was a funny feeling to see them go while my feet were planted on the ground in front of the Fili. I went upstairs and moped around until our departure time came around noon.

It was a glorious day for a plane ride. After passing through customs, our van took us to the Antonov, which sat gleaming in the sun.


Getting to the passenger compartment was interesting. Carrying my backpack, I negotiated my way between containers and between containers and the side bulkhead of the cargo compartment, which included stepping around the chains that held the cargo in place. Once at the back of the airplane, you climbed a flimsy ladder up into the passenger compartment.

I don't know what I noticed first, the lack of windows or the very utilitarian decor. The compartment was lit by light spilling in through a small porthole aft and by four light fixtures in the forward portion of the compartment. The lights were located over two large tables situated on either side of the aisle, the seats of which served as crew seating during takeoff and landing. The shot to the left is of a couple of our guys (the guys from Teleport Luch, actually, who were also deplaning in Ulyanovsk for the train to Moscow) sitting at one of the tables.

Eventually, the craft was buttoned up and the engines outside started to turn over. Then we started to taxi. The noise from the engines notched up several times as we taxied, but I only realized we were about to take off when the crew suddenly started fumbling for their safety belts. (Free advice: When Russians buckle up, make sure you're buckled up as well!)

The takeoff was not much different from most other flights I've been on, except that there is no attempt to gain altitude quickly as one experiences on commercial airlines. Instead - and this is based on both my perceptions during takeoff and having seen the Antonov take off - the aircraft actually stays close to the ground for a while after actually lifting up off the runway, in order to take advantage of the so-called "ground effect" to build airspeed.

This was a truly no-frills flight, as we had brought our lunches along in bags. I slept for a while. In just about two and a half hours, the crew again sat down at the front of the compartment and buckled up in preparation for landing. Soon, we had wrestled our luggage out from beneath cargo netting and were on the bus to the terminal for passport control and customs, which proceeded without a hitch. Then, it was off to town.

I had done some web research before leaving Baikonur and only realized that I was looking at the wrong part of town after it took almost forever to get from the airport to a bus stop. We had landed at the East Ulyanovsk airport, which is home to at least a half dozen An-124s that I could see (and an alternate landing strip for the defunct Buran vehicle), not the much smaller airport that's only a few kilometers from the main train station in town.

Anyway, from the bus stop our group piled into a local shuttle van, which took us to a secondary train station where we could buy tickets without having to battle the lines at the main station downtown. The woman behind the window was very friendly, in a good mood, and even better humor, which I found seemed to be common among Ulyanovsk residents. Perhaps I was just lucky.

As it turned out, there were no four-berth compartments left, so we ended up buying passage in a pair of two-berth compartments. As we left the station on the way back to the main road, we passed a quaint house with a very pleasant-looking garden in the back.

It took some time to find a taxi to take us the rest of the way into town, but we did. The car was a small one, a Lada, I think, which means that it barely held four guys and their luggage. I got my first glimpse of the Volga river wedged in the middle of the back seat, and gazing toward the west bank of the river, I was reminded of the opening scene from Enemy At The Gates, as the Soviet troops are crossing this same Volga river somewhat south of where I was, across from a city known then as Stalingrad. In the end, we all got to the station without incident.

After a light snack of pilmeni and a bottle of vodka, we made our way to the train and our compartments. Since we had just eaten, the steward on the train agreed to let us take dinner in the dining car later. Dinner was no cordon bleu feast, but certainly edible and better than other food I've had the opportunity to eat on trains.

I slept fitfully on the train, but got a good night's sleep nonetheless. About the strangest thing that I dreamed I had awakened in the compartment to find a small, funny looking cat sitting on my chest. (I assume, since I found no cat hair on my bedding, that it was a dream. Nothing happened, at any rate.)

We got into Moscow on time and Alex A. and I negotiated the small mob of folks offering taxi services and went downstairs into the Metro. An hour later, I was at my hotel.

Ultimately, the delayed departure from Baikonur not only made any sightseeing in Ulyanovsk impossible, but also put some pressure on us to buy tickets and avoid being late for the train. From what I saw there, however, I think I'd like to go back someday for a closer look.

Cheers...