Arrived in Moscow

We made it to Moscow with only a minor hiccup. The flights were on time (for the most part), none of the luggage was lost, we breezed through passport control and customs without problem. In fact, the green line for customs wasn't even staffed. We just walked out! Weird.

The minor hiccup was when we were to get our ride from the airport. Our travel manual explicitly states that we are to insist that the driver show us his official SGA badge. Under no circumstances were we to go with anyone else. We shouldn't be fooled with just a white piece of paper that had SGA written on it.

Well, you guess it, the guy that met us had a white piece of paper with SGA printed on it. We asked for his badge and he didn't have one. He mentioned our Russian agent's name, but we thought anyone could have found that out. He mentioned that we were going to Veronish, but again, anyone could know that. So he handed us the phone and said that Artyom wanted to speak with me. Someone with good English spoke to us, but how did we know this was Artyom? Finally he got Kyler Welch on the phone. I recognized his voice and he said we should go with this guy. He also stressed that we did the right thing.

After we made it to the hotel in only 2 hours (normal with traffic is 4!!) because of congestion, he said that this really was a good thing because they needed to understand the security system put in place is serious. This is the first time that it ever didn't work. I guess the guy they had pick us up was about fourth down on the list and lost his badge or something. At any rate, this probably will never happen again.

Not much else to talk about. Went to dinner at an American dinner. Food was pretty good. Leaving for Veronish in about 1 hour. We will have first class sleeping cabins (2 to a room--normal is 4). I guess they are pretty cramped but at this stage of the game I don't care. We're all pretty beat! I don't know what hour we are on, but it's above 24!