August 10, 1998

When we got up this morning, it was foggy.  The Lord was just being good to me by not letting me see the mountains around Euensk.  We readied the plane then went inside to prepare our paperwork.  Weather looked good in Anadyr but it was zero visibility and zero ceiling in Euensk.  Kahlide wanted us to spend the night again but we couldn't.  She was trying to stall our departure.  When I could see the mountains around Euensk.  We readied the plane then went inside to prepare our paperwork.  Weather looked good in Anadyr but it was zero visibility and zeros ceiling in Euensk.  Khalide wanted us to spend the night again but we couldn't.   She was trying to stall our departure.  When I could see a little bit of the area, I decided to go.  long flight to Nome.  Khalide, Peter Yuri, and the two Constantines said their good-byes.  We are going to miss these guys a lot.   Khalide ran up to the controllers so she could play radio guy.  She is the only English speaking one.  We took off and headed out to see.  About 4,000 feet, we were out of the clouds.  Khalide was happy.  She turned us over to Chaibuna and said goodbye.  This was the first time Nikki and I had flown together since St. Petersburg, 2 weeks earlier.  About an hour out of Euensk, we started hearing voices we could understand.  (Delta 59, thanks for the conversation)  We landed in Anadyr about 5 PM.  They had received a fax telling them to get us about 50 liters of auto fuel for that little buffer on the way home.  But as we stood there, we were surrounded by numerous people with negative words.  Seems, they weren't going to let us out of the country because of various reasons.  When I met each reason with an answer, they changed the reason we couldn't leave.  First, it was not customs.   Found out customs was waiting for us.  Then it was no fuel.  I told them that we didn't need it, cancel the fuel.  Next it was immigrations, then the last was no permission from Moscow to exit the country.  Seems we had permission on the 9th but not the 10th.  Weather delay doesn't count.  We asked who were needed the permission from.  They said Mr. Velikosky.  Nikki and I in unison said "Guennady?"  They just stared at us.  We faxed Velikosky and then they took us to a flat to spend the night.  We realized later that no phone lines went outside the village we were in.  I went to the air traffic controllers office and they let me call Anchorage Center.  no one knew where we were at this time.   Anchorage Center called Stan Steck in Denali at 2 AM and let him know what was going on.  We went to sleep so we could get up early.  During the night, I woke up to Nikki, in her long johns and turtle neck shirt, hollering and pushing the door shut.   Seems a drunk Russian had gotten into our flat and she was trying to keep him out.   I was very impressed with her grasp of the Russian language at this time but I do think this is where the Russian words I learned from the mechanics would come in handy.