NYC Thanksgiving

No Address.

Great. I just received notification via email from the Post Office that I forgot to pay my biannual fee to keep my PO Box open. They closed it, and now I temporarily have no mailing address.

Welcome to Russia.

Near Death Experience #1: From Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod I flew on S7 Airlines. The “S” stands for Siberian, which means it’s a Russian plane and Russian pilot. Having worked in Russia, I know that this cannot be that safe of a combination. While on board the 50 minute flight, we abruptly hit the most violent bout of turbulence I have ever experienced. There was no warning from the pilot or anything. The lady behind me was crying, the flight attendants were looking scared, people were muffling their screams, and I was literally praying because I thought that it was going to be the end of my life. I am by no means a person who is scared of flying, but I truly thought this was the end. It lasted maybe 3-5 minutes (which felt like an hour) and then it stopped, just as suddenly as it started, with no word from the pilot. Welcome to Russia.

Near Death Experience #2: Maintenance guy was welding something for us and didn't remove it from its location. It was too close to a machine that had oil lubricant.. sparks flew, and the machine caught on fire (had a vacuum sealed part on it -- which is explosive) and neither of the two fire extinguishers we could find worked. We had to find a bucket of water to dump on it, and after wards had to clean out the entire machine because the oil was now mixed with water. It's the second fire that's started within the last 3 days. Welcome to Russia.




By the way, are we sure history books are right when they say that it was Russia and the USA who were a part of the Space Race?

A little bit of panic never hurt anyone..

So you had to of known when I typed the previous itinerary that there was no way it would go that smoothly.

I started the day at 6:00am in Chicago, flew to LaGuardia, and took a taxi to the Visa Processing office in Manhatten to pick up my passport. When I got there, they acted really surprised to see me. They didn’t expect to have it until tomorrow due to last week's holiday in Russia (despite their conformation that it would be ready Thursday).

After going through my paperwork, they realized that it was their mistake and sent a liaison over to try to negotiate with the Russian consulate to pick it up. However, there was some kind of bomb scare, so the Russian consulate was closed for approximately 4 hours. I got a call from the office that it was very unlikely I would get my passport tonight.

In the mean time I was walking around NYC and ran into the Veteran's Day parade, met an old college friend for coffee, and walked and walked and walked.



I almost never get stressed about things going wrong traveling, but this one was causing me some anxiety since I really need to be in Moscow tomorrow. If I missed the flight, that would mean I would miss the meeting altogether since we are both meeting in Moscow en route to someplace else. Luckily for me, Murphy's Law proved wrong for once and the story ends well since I am now enjoying some relaxation in the Lufthansa lounge before my flight..


Anyways, I say things are good.. but it's only been 15 hours since I left this morning, and it'll be another 11.5 before I arrive at the airport in Moscow.. so there's plenty of room for more adventures.

New Plumbing Technology

So here was my itinerary for this trip:

Saturday: Fly into Chicago, IL, Drive down to West Lafayette, IN for weekend with friends and family
Monday: Drive to Champaign, IL for work
Wednesday: Drive to Chicago, IL just as a transportation night
Thursday: Fly to LaGuardia NY, pick up passport, fly from JFK to Moscow
Friday: Arrive in Moscow
Saturday: Meeting in Moscow
Sunday: Fly to Nizhny Novgorod

Now, you know on a stint like this.. something is bound to happen. I'm already at Wednesday (Chicago, IL) and things have gone pretty smoothly so far.

However, tonight when I got to my hotel near the airport after I flushed the toilet, and it just kept running and running. I'm not really into fixing toilets, so I decided if I let it run for a while it might stop on it's own... until I got a call from the front desk. They explained to me that the person below me was complaining that there was a noise that sounded like a radio. My only guess was that it was the running toilet, so I was forced to take action. I lifted the lid to see if the thing was stuck (yes, this is very technical plumber lingo) and much to my surprise, it was filled with doorknobs...



I'm not so sure what to make of this.

Halloween in Chicago

A weekend with two of my favorites in Chicago..

I typically hate halloween.. but somehow we managed to have some fun. I had two costumes because one was suffocating me..





At 5am I woke up to the sound of the fire alarm going off.. turns out we almost burned down Sara's apartment by leaving the pizza rolls in the oven overnight... if you ever wondered what pizza rolls looked like after baking for 9 hours, now you know:

I literally live at work.

I had put it off for about 2 weeks and just used my passport.. but finally this week I went to get my replacement license. It got to a point where I couldn’t put it off anymore because my passport is required for finishing the processing of my Russian Visa.

Not surprisingly, I needed to give them a permanent address, even after I explained my situation to the lady at the DMV and even after she talked to her supervisor. (I’d like say ‘told you so’ to the officer that pulled me over for talking on my cell phone and told me I could put a PO Box on my license).

They told me I could put an address of a hotel I frequently stay at (not normal), so I gave up and put the office address. People who work a lot always use the phrase “I live at work”, but now my permanent residence is at work... I literally live at work. If I ever get fired it’s going to be awkward.

Exhausted.

Well, I had been looking forward to last weekend for a long time. I decided it was my weekend to catch up on the past 3 months of sleep. I did a lot of relaxing and slept probably 10-12 hours a night. No Spike or 5 hr energy was consumed within this time..

After the weekend I felt great and ready to take on the week. Until Monday afternoon when I was tired again... So I started reading that it is impossible to repay sleep debt. Turns out I'm pretty screwed..
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/news/20100115/sleep-debt-hard-to-repay

I love this life, but it is extremely exhausting traveling every week for work and not sleeping and traveling every weekend for fun and not sleeping.

RIP Passport

05/07/2001 – 10/01/10

I am sad to say goodbye to a loyal travel companion and holder of many memories. The past 10 years we’ve laughed together, we’ve cried together, and we’ve created memories I will never forget.

Summary of my Passport’s life:
- Germany: Frankfurt – 8 stamps
- Germany: Stuttgart – 1 stamp
- Ireland: Shannon – 1 stamp
- Mexico: Baja Californai – 4 stamps
- Mexico: Neuvo Leon – 10 stamps
- Netherlands: Amsterdam – 1 stamp
- Norway: Oslow (Gardenmoen)- 2 stamps
- Peru: Cuzco – 2 stamps
- Peru: Machu Picchu park – 1 stamp
- Russia: Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow (I don’t know how to tell the difference between the stamps) – 60 stamps
- Russian Visas: 4
- South Africa: Johannesburg – 1 stamp
- USA – 24 stamps
- 12 pages more than a standard passport has in it because I ran out of room


RIP Passport

My new passport has a lot to live up to…

Guest Writer: KYLE ZAK

Kyle came to visit me last weekend, and there was so much that happened that I was too lazy to summarize it myself... so here's Kyle's entry:


Dumb and Dumber take on New England

Last weekend I had a long weekend so I decided to visit Hilary. I booked my flights about a week before, and that’s when the problems began. Turns out I booked a flight for Friday morning instead of Saturday (meaning that I would have to miss my classes on Friday). Luckily, Hilary caught my mistake and since I called Expedia 24 hours within booking, they took care of it without making me pay the nasty $150 fee.

The original plan was for me to get there Saturday, go visit Salem (where they had the witch trials), and then drive up to Mt Washington in New Hampshire. On Sunday we would climb the mountain and then head back to Connecticut.

This did not even remotely resemble our weekend.

The troubles began when we got to Salem and started walking around. It quickly became apparent that Salem is an awful place to visit. Something about the lack of historic buildings and the abundance of Italian sausage and Spongebob balloons really turned us off, so after meeting up with a couple of Hilary’s friends we decided to go to dinner.


On the way there, the navigation system took us through a light that decided to stay red through two whole cycles. We didn’t stick around to find out if the third time was the charm, and after the navigation system took us in a few circles we got to dinner.


Keep in mind that at this point I’ve flown out to Connecticut and driven to Massachusetts to go to a mall and eat at the Cheesecake Factory.

After dinner we left for New Hampshire, heading towards Mt Washington. On the way Hilary’s friends called to see if we wanted to go to a haunted house that was kind of on the way, so we decided why not. When we got to the haunted house we started calling around trying to find hotels in the area, only to find that they were completely booked in the entire “region.” A few phone calls later told us that “region” implies New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont, so after the haunted house we drove back down to Boston. The haunted houses were fun, and included Hilary squeezing my hand off, freezing in lines, Hilary’s friend Chris entertaining everyone around us with his stories, and being told that we “smell like Walmart.”


Not wanting to drive the 6-hour round trip to Mt Washington all in one day, we spent Sunday in Boston attempting to follow the freedom trail, which is a clearly marked trail that goes past several historic sites in Boston. Apparently following a red line is above our capabilities though, because we lost it several times.

We then drove back to Connecticut. On the way, Hilary managed to lose her wallet at a rest stop. So, we had to turn around, get back on the toll road, drive past the rest stop another 6 miles, get off the toll road and pay the toll, turn around, get back on the toll road, and drive back the 6 miles. They didn’t have it.

After checking in at the hotel in Connecticut, I went to the lobby to get some toothpaste from the front desk. The guy in front of me was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but unfortunately no underwear. And his pants were quite loose, so there was about a half to three-quarters moon. And the girl he was with? In a wedding dress. I love how these things happen to me.

Monday was the day for me to leave. However, at some point on Saturday, we realized that I had my flight back to Indy booked for Tuesday night. After the lady at the ticket counter told us that it would cost over $350 to get my flight switched, we logged on Hilary’s computer and booked a new flight for about $180. Ha!

Overall, the weekend was a disaster. Fun, but awful at the same time.