Trip 2, Day 1: Flying the friendly skies

Tonight I write this blog as we travel by the Trans-Siberian Railway from Kirov to Moscow. I’ve got a few days’ worth of travel to catch up on, so here goes.

Wednesday, July 21^st

We left Casa deCarda South early in the morning to catch our 9am flight. Although we had 3 seats for this journey, we were unable to get those seats together for our 1^st segment to Chicago. Alan played the gentleman, sitting in a single middle seat, while Kathy got the aisle and middle seat directly behind him.

The flight was uneventful, as was the flight from Chicago to Washington. On that flight, we were able to sit together, and enjoyed having the extra room. In Washington, we loaded up at the Duty Free shop, purchasing some of the gifts that we would be expected to provide to the various Russian officials we would be in contact with over the next few days.

At this point, let me break into the story and tell you about our luggage situation. It’s not easy packing for a 3 ½ week trip. It gets more difficult when you’re carrying 50 lbs of 'gifts' for court dignitaries and orphanage officials; add an 11 month old at the end of it, and you've got quite a mess. Between us, we had: 3 checked bags, 2 computer bags, 2 personal bags, a purse, and now 4 bottles of alcohol and a box of chocolates. The worst part of the trip was attempting to board and disembark from the Kirov train with all of this stuff. Run Forrest, Run!

Back to our story. As we waited for the flight to Moscow, there was an interesting dynamic. Over and over, United was announcing that Economy Plus seats were available for upgrade. We considered this, but since we already had an extra seat, we didn’t feel it was worth the extra money.

There were a number of surprises on our flight, both good and bad. The good was that each seat had a built in monitor, with 9 movies to choose from that played on a 2 hour loop throughout the flight. I was able to watch Toy Story 2, Clash of the Titans (Release the Kraken!) and a very heavily edited National Lampoon’s Vacation. It was also nice that the seats reclined about 50% more than Delta seats.

The bad was that the seats reclined about 50% more than Delta seats, which meant that when the large Russian Mamushka in front of me decided to sit back and relax during dinner, I was just about eating her blue tinged hair. Not that I was too interested in my meal. Whatever meat they had been distributing was long gone by the time they reached our row, so we had our choice of pasta or air. Kathy felt she should have chosen the air.

Perhaps the oddest feature of this flight was the waiting. We arrived early, despite delays both in our departures and arrivals. After we pulled out of the terminal gate, we sat on the tarmac for a few minutes. We taxied to another part of the airport, and waited longer. Moved again, and this time the wait was on. I’m not quite sure how long we waited (both of us fell asleep), but they had the engines completely shut down while we were waiting.

Nearly the same event occurred when we arrived in Moscow. Despite the completely sunny skies, we circled Moscow for nearly an hour before we were given clearance to land. Once we did, we had a few nervous moments. Everywhere on the sides of the tarmac, we saw plane after plane with the doors open, and stairs pushed up to them. Had something happened while we were in the air? Were we going to be making the news as part of an international incident?

The next blog post should go up in about 8 hours, so you won't need to wait long to find out!