Saturday May 13, Lisa and I sang in Diamondhead, MS. Michael Dauphenais playing. Mike is a sweet man and a great pianist who works at AZ. Opera.

The day before, Mike and I drove around the area for an hour, totally hungry looking for a place to eat. We had the Garmina with us so we thought let's test her out. We wanted cajun. we chose restaurant after restaurant and after driving five or so miles at a stretch, we'd come to find out that the restaurant wasn't there any longer. Katrina. Lots of "We'll be back" signs, from two years ago. We finally settled upon the seafood place we saw when we started the dinner tour fiasco. I mean, seeing the demolished houses and FEMA trailers and red 'X''s on the houses was a startling dash of spicy cajun reality. But that couldn't stop us from being 'ungry.

We had the best seafood the both of us had ever tasted. Red Shrimp, oysters and Softshell crab and lots of beer. It helped assuage our discomfort at having so much fun in this land of devastation. The Concert was rockin too, considering Lisa and I hadn't touched our music in a year. She really is a nice person, aside from the completely soprano hereditary...soprano-ness. It's not drama, it's just Soprano-ness. I don't know. Some Sops do not act like sopranos. Some are severe sopranos and crazy and mean, Lisa isn't that, but there's that je ne sais qua.

So the audience was older, like usual. With Beau and I just getting back from our rock tour where we had a good cross section of ages, this show was back to square basic. Somewhat an emotional response, well attended, and you know, nice.

In the airport I got an email from Oleg, the director of the fest and directly under George Isaakyan that one of the two perfromances, though not their fault, was "Abolished". I thought that was a bit extreme, you know, to abolish a show...I'm sure it was just a cancelling, but it still left a kind of, uhoh feeling in my belly.

I called EricWho reassured me and told me to contact them and offer some different ways we could make up that perfromance. A fundraiser, a home concert soiree' whatever. I did that, also...it was at this point we were trying to find out what airport we would be leaving from in NYC to get to Moscow. I sent this double message. It's ok, we can do something else there, lets just get to Russia, by the way, what airline are we to take? No response...

I got home Kissed Laurie, freshened up and began to pack for the excursion, finally finding out from ZHanna "...It's the only airline in Russia..." Duhh, truly, all we had to do was look.

In the wee small hours of the morning, we shot off into the blue orange light as we rushed to the already waking east. We arrived in the moringin at JFK, where indeed, we were taking off early in the evening. Beau and I carrying guitars and cd's and jonque like that clambered up to the top level multi fast food restaurant lounge, where we found this odd Japanese/Korean food kiosk that had all sorts of fresh Asio-centric foodstuffs. Sushi, Salads, Dumplings, etc were freshly made and, airport expensive. We go our food and found a table at the Sam Adams lounge where the drinking began.

**Science-Fiction author, Douglas Adams in his revered book, Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy, wrote about the protagonist, Arthur Dent being taken to the local pub by Ford Prefect for at least two pints...and some peanuts in order to soften the blow of successfully Hitching a ride on the nearest interstellar ship. It is a truism anywhere. Intercontinental or interstellar,flying just goes better with a few beers or a couple of stiff ones in your gullet. Besides, we had to get our livers a kick in the pants, there would be much drinking in Russia.**

At last, we headed to the gate. It was time. our real Yahooo moment had arrived. We were on our way.

We arrived at The Moscow Airport after a very long, uncomfortable flight. If one has the opportunity to fly at least business class, i suggest doing so );>)) No amount o liquor can save you from the eventual Coach Class Knee Crash Syndrome. (CCKS), a debilitating condition of some times excruciatingly painful episodes where in mid sleep the !@#$ in front of you pushes that little silver button slamming your knees, waking you from the sleep that took you hours to conjure after even more time of shifting trying to find the least not-comfortable position in order to take the two hours to fall asleep. It has a curious sound too. A soft brushing sound should be a quiet warning sign for the wary, but since CCKS primarily occurs when you are asleep, it is hard to brace for the coming attack. The next sounds are *1.Slam! 2. Unghh! 3. through clenched teeth (!@#$ a frazza %^%$#) 4. ZZZZZzzzz from in front. This is a curable syndrome. Just know that the push button on your seat is not for pushing. ever. It's there to let you know that the airlines know that you and they can choose to make a person's life agonizing for a particular amount of time.


When we deboarded our Aeroflot flight
feeling ever much like the big-time hotshots with our guitars...or rather Beau's guitars strapped to our backs. That is until we were aware that we were completely incapable of speaking Russian much less capble of being able to read Cyrillic alphas and then translate them. that took all of thirty seconds. Hotshot to Derrr, Hunh?

Aeroflot though does a really great service of having English translations for pretty much ererything on their signage. Thank Jezebell.

We scurried over to the Help desk and after mumbling something in heavilly accented english we were told in perfectly good english by a nice lady to go down this hall and get on the bus.
**Note** Yes, we were mumbling in accents. You see Beau came upon this years ago, not by chooice, but just automatically it owuld happen. I would laugh and say, wow, every time you talk to someone where english is a second language for them, you go into this wierd accent. He noticed it, but never changed it and I thought it, after a while was merely affectation. But lo, there we were all of thirty seconds and I started saying Dhhue Yhou No wher we to go? In this strange Russio/'Merican pidgin speak. I tell you it was FREAKY. an instant transformation!

She said, "Yhou go down to de Hall ayand tek the sters down and gehd on dee Buhsz."
"Thenk yhough" I said.

We walked down the hall and met 'Super Model Security Chick'. A cross between Gaultier/Versace and Blade Runner . She said something to the effect of No you are not going down that way. Seeing that this super high fashone model was not about to let us go, we began the beurocratic trudge back to the lady at the counter. She rolled her eyes made some kind of remeark not understood by many of the Russian speakers there and walked us back down the hall past the security model and to the Domestic Flights corner. They checked our PPorts and visas said 'hev a nize deh' and we were pointed in the direction to walk, which we did. When we came upon a blank wall, we seriously turned into broken Roombas, or automatons who when wound up, would just bump against the wall. Fortunately, the person came around the corner and pointed us through a small doorway. It was very quiet and we were the only people there.

We went downstairs, the only way we could go, and saw two people sitting on benches in this little mini bus stop/storage area. There were some benches and old baggage checkers and some desks piled on top of them...we could not have been more confused. The two people watched us and one of them chimed in, "Youh luhk foar deh Boosz?"
"Yesz we wait foar de Busz," Beau replied.
"Youh're in raght plehce."
I couldn't help sigh out a 'thank God'.

We waited for deh Buhsz. And not too long after we arrive at the snot green bus stop then the bus showed up. We got on and began the immersion into Ursa Major.

The bus took us on the tarmac of the airport for a while and then broke onto a small country road. HUNH? ONe side we could see the airport, from a distance, but the other side was an old, long grey wall covered in rusty barbed wire. Where were we going? We went past these cinder airport buildings, painted in faded traditional checker red and white. Some of them had a crew of about ten painting these really small buildings, freshening up, as we drove along this little country road headed to our certain demise.

We soon arrived at a little airport and realized we had gone around the perimeter of the 'internatty port' and gotten to the other side of the acreage to this little domestic building where the control tower looked like some Tsarist building out of Zhivago. Kind of castle like.

There we waited around for some more time and met up with a guy from KC who was going to Perm for an international gological convention. That's where we learned the the "Permian Layer" was named after this region. The breadth and scope of the area was so rich in diverse ecology, minerals and all of that type of stuff that they named an epoch after it. We also learned that we would be flying in a BOMBER! .............

Yeah a bomber, like a 70's style flying fortress that had been converted to commercial flight status. Indeed, we shuttled out to the winged bringer of death and it had the telltale glass nose that gave the bombardier positioning and allowed them to drop their precious cargo in a carpet-like manner over soon to be decimated masses. It was actually a very comfortable ride and the cabin was very fresh looking.

We deboarded the plane and uneventlfully got our baggage. Eventually, we were met by Diaghilev Festival people who picked us up, deposited us in a very cigarette smoke filled, with a creamy strawberry air freshener scented, Van. On to the Hotel Ural.

On the drive to the hotel we met our first colleague, Brighitta. She is the director of the Riga Opera festival, or something. Honestly, I cannot remember, which is a shame because we met so many wonderful people on this sojourn.

Basically we went straight from Airport to hotel to a brief change of clothes and then off to the Opera House.

There, we popped into Rusalka and watched a litle bit of the ending... and I thought it was Wagner. AH well. You know, I know what I've sung.

After the opera we were taken to the office, a very cozy, yet modern affair and generally around the building. It was really cool to smell and see this really old building and feel the history of however many dancers and musicians had cometed through the halls.

After the tour, we were shown to the Banquet Room where we would be spending the most of our evenings, talking eating drinking and discussing music in the world.

-fin-