Well we made it, that is to Russia! Which given the paperwork and planning that has been involved in itself is no mean feat. I'm writing this on a bus (definitely without sidecar) but we'll get to that later.
So me and my comrade Fish met up in Moscow. Now i haven't seen this boy since i left him sleeping outside MacDonald's in Lima airport last May but he hasn't changed a bit, and I'm thankful for that.
I had been given directions to a cafe by our lovely hosts which was near the train station where the airport express terminated. The directions weren't bad, but not understanding Russian or being able to decipher Cyrillic, I quickly realised navigation was gonna be a problem. How are we going to find a small town in the Arctic Circle when i cant find my partner in crime in Moscow? Of course I used a luxury that i cant rely on which was a phone. I eventually found him (Ok he eventually found me) in a cafe with two lovely local Russian ladies Elena and Anya drinking wine giggling and having a good time. I quickly put a stop to that as my 20kg bag landed on the floor with a thud.
Elena was our couch surfing host and she ushered us out of the cafe to her place. I think it was then, that I realised how cold it was, but I had my jacket on and I was toastie except my face.
Fish of course was wearing what looked like next to nothing. His bag was 10 kg (how does that work?) and of course he didn't look like he'd done a 20 hr journey from the land of Oz. God - you can't help but hate him sometimes ;-P
We decided rather than make Elena cook for us as she had gracefully offered, we'd do the decent foreign thing and have a Maccy Ds. We opted for a take away and Fish has his first ever big mac (wtf!!!). Our culinary habits might be of interest but I think not, and I promise I won't be itemising every meal we have hereon in unless truly weird. But this was a mad physics experiment as within five minutes of walking out of Ronald's abode, the two cokes we had brought had frozen solid. This was something neither of us had seen and put the seriousness of the task in hand into context....of course we just pissed ourselves!!
We had an excellent two days in Moscow where we got some sight seeing done, met some wonderful people (Elena and Alina and their friends), showed we can handle the cold better than the locals by wearing a lot less. and managed to look hopeless on the ice rink but awesome on the dance floor. One thing we know is that we can't wait to return to Moscow to tell our story of the next few weeks to new friends.
So where are we now? Well look to the left and you should see the moving Incaredibles sign as it hurtles to Irbit. We're almost there and it's been a long day which started well (waking up in time), threatened to turn out terrible -the flight was going to go without us even though we checked in on time as the bag drop queue was so long and unregulated. What followed was collective begging and eyelash fluttering and foreign accent pushing until we were involved in a mad rush 5 mins before take off with our check in luggage still in tow going through carry on security, needless to say we werent popular with airport staff or pasengers and i have already lost a glove in the mellee. We now hope to finish in a past out state on low quality Vodka, and meet the other teams (we have met Ice Ice Maye on the bus, and they seem the right sorts)
This is the first on road blog entry so I apologise for the mundane tone. But remember wherever The Incaredibles go, drama inevitably follows.
Paca
Avi Incaredible
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