Back home for sure...

I slept for most of the flight from Atlanta to Albuquerque, thereby missing out - theoretically - on the experience of my complimentary first class upgrade, but I figure the more comfortable seat may have been conducive to sleeping, so I'm not complaining.

We arrived about 15 minutes early, and soon, I was in the Ford with Galina, deciding whether to stay in Albuquerque or drive home immediately. Since I had slept, and since Shiloh had been left at home, we decided to drive home last night.

The crescent moon was pointed very nearly straight down at the horizon, looking very nearly like a disembodied smile in the sky. It gradually dropped down and seemed to play hide and seek with us, as various terrain features came between it and us. When it finally disappeared for the night, the sky really came alive with stars.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the time or place to stop and admire the view. A few years ago, I recall stopping late at night along Highway 84 between Santa Fe and Clines Corners to do exactly that as Natalie and I were driving down to Houston, and it was so breathtakingly cold, it was hard to concentrate on the sky, (Indeed, I said a little prayer for the car to start back up, else between the below-freezing temperature and the lack of traffic, we'd have been in a pickle.)

We finally got home after 1 am. The water to the house was off, the result of a meter reading that suggests that somewhere between our meter and our house, we're leaking somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 gallons of water per month. <sigh> (As if we didn't have other things to do with our money.)

It's going to be one of those hit-the-ground-running kinds of days. I can feel it.

Cheers...

A quick look back at my trip...

Back when I worked in the Soviet Union for a US travel agency, a visit to the grounds of the Exhibition of National Economic Achievements - typically referred to as VDNKh (pronounced veh-deh-en-hah) - was on the itinerary of all "my" groups. It was a pleasant enough place, even if the point of the whole affair was to propagandize the achievements of the USSR. Today, there are a number of small shops and restaurants in the park, and a ferris wheel, and probably tons of other things I'm not aware of.

At the south end of the exhibition grounds, at the end of a street named after Sergei Korolev (and in fact, right next to the south end of the Metro station named after the exhibition), there is a small park featuring a monument dedicated to the conquerors of space. Here's a shot taken of me visiting the site last Friday:


The monument is in the shape of a relatively small rocket atop a sweeping plume. The structure is constructed to titanium, which was a pretty exotic metal to use for such a purpose back when this monument was built.

The lower left-hand corner of the photo shows a row of smaller stones with plaques on them, in the shape of five-pointed stars. These list, chronologically, specific Soviet achievements in space (for example, the first on-orbit docking, involving Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5, in January 1969, as well as the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission). Plaques closer to the monument carry the names of cosmonauts, in chronological order.

On the base of the monument are lines from a poem written by Nikolay Gribachev (though his authorship is not attributed). They read (in Russian, followed by my translation):

...и наши тем награждены усилья,
что, поборов бесправие и тьму,
мы отковали пламенные крылья
   своей
      стране
         и веку своему!

...and our efforts have been rewarded
in that, no longer powerless and having overcome the darkness,
we have forged wings of fire
   for our
      country
         and our time!

Off to the side of the main "axis" of the park is a statue of the man who masterminded the Soviet space program.


The odd looking item in the background, which seems to disappear into the sky, is another Moscow landmark, the nearly 1800-foot tall Ostankino television tower, which - last Friday - did extend up through the solid cloud layer that blanketed the cover.

My colleague Ben and I didn't stay too long, as it was cold outside and the museum that's situated in the base of the monument was closed. I hope to return again when the weather gets warmer.

Cheers...