Ош

This past week I travelled to the second largest city in Kyrgyzstan to oversee a Tax Evasion and Money Laundering program being put on for the prosecutors in the southern region of the country. The city is Ош (pronounced "Osh"). While it may be the second largest city in the country, it makes Green Bay look like New York by comparison. There are two ways one can get to Ош. You can drive for thirteen hours through steep winding roads and a single mountain pass which may or may not be closed depending on the weather, or you can fly for 55 minutes. It seemed like an easy choice up until the moment I got to the airport.

Upon arriving at the airport things were going really well. We were on time and even found a non-smoking waiting room which is a rarity in this part of the world. As we waited for our flight to depart I looked out at U.S. Air National Guard planes which were waiting to be loaded with supplies for our troops in Afghanistan. I thought about my flights in and out of Iraq in similar aircraft. While I was daydreaming, I blinked and the next time I re-focused on the planes they had disappeared in a dense fog. It had gone from beautiful to crappy in about thirty seconds. I knew we were not flying out to Ош that night. Of course, it took about another two hours for someone with the airline to officially cancel the flight.

The next morning I awoke and it was still a bit foggy, but I was fairly sure that we would fly out that morning. We went to the airport and did the same routine as the night before. Unlike in the States, however, when there are cancelled flights things work a bit differently. As you know, in the U.S. when a flight is cancelled due to poor weather the airlines re-book passengers on a different flight. Here they tell you to return with your ticket and wait for your flight to take off in the order that it was cancelled. So if you were the third flight in line prior to the flight being cancelled, you will be third the next day as well. As we were waiting for our flight which was third or fourth in line, I was grabbed by my Kyrgyz colleague and told to quickly get in line and "cash in my ticket." Apparently there were six open spots on a flight that was leaving in a matter of minutes. Somehow we simultaneously checked our bags, cashed out our old tickets and purchased new tickets. No extra charge, no need hassle, and apparently this is a common practice. It has been many many years since I actually had anything other than an "e-ticket," so it took me back a bit to a time when having an actual airplane ticket meant something.

As I was feeling the nostalgia of carbon copy tickets and no fee airlines, I got my first look at the airplane. The plane made me think of times gone by as well, like the late 1960's when I was about -5 years old. I'm not sure what caught my attention first, the somewhat warped propellers, or the engines behind them which were black with many decades of smoke and oil accumulation. As I climbed the fold out stairs and ducked my head to get inside I saw about four or five holes in the fuselage which had been patched and painted over. Upon entering the plane I was hit with the strong odor of gasoline and exhaust. I went to sit in my seat and put my laptop in the overhead compartment. There was a mean looking "Babushka" (grandmother/old lady) in my seat and there were no overhead bins, just a rack like one might find on a bus or train. Despite showing her my ticket and having my colleague address her in Russian, this Babushka apparently liked seat 9 D and was not going without a fight. My colleague asked if I would just sit in a different seat. Of course this was fine until the next angry Babushka came and wanted to sit in her seat, which was now my seat. Finally, after bouncing around a bit someone convinced this woman that she had to move to her assigned seat. She cursed or something as she pushed past me.

Now I had my seat, and what a seat it was. My seat, along with every other was extremely old and broken. These seats didn't just recline, it was their default position. Picture an entire plane load of people with the head of the person in front of you placed squarely on your lap. Not to mention it was a most uncomfortable position, not quite laying down, but not quite sitting up. As I stared out the bottom of the bubble window (picture the window on the submarine in Disney's 1950's classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) which was now just above my head, I saw a worker pulling some type of machine up to the propeller engine which apparently gave it a jolt and started them spinning despite what seemed like a bit of resistance. I had to wonder if there was another individual with a hand crank in the front.

We set off down the runway bouncing the whole way. I noticed the bald (I don't mean "balding," I mean bald) tires on the landing gear. I also noticed a wire which had detached from something on the landing gear and was now flapping in the breeze. Those of you who know me well know that I really don't have a problem with flying other than on long haul flights where you are trapped in a seat for fourteen hours. My mind rarely ponders things like wings being sheared off, or mid-air explosions. At about ten feet off of the ground I began to worry about wings being sheared off and mid-air explosions. As we flew over the snow covered Tien Shien mountains which were beautiful and majestic I began to relax a little. My mind now wandered to the Uruguayan Rugby team which crashed in the Andes and managed to survive for 72 days by eating their fellow passengers. So while I was still pretty sure we would crash, I chose to see the glass as half-full and was now certain I would somehow find the will to survive and that mean old Babushka was going to be on the menu.

Unbelievably, we landed in Ош about an hour later. I watched as the runway took what was perhaps the final layer of rubber off of the tire beneath my window. I would have kissed the ground, but I had my bag thrown at me from the luggage compartment before I could complete the act. In all, the flight went more quickly than I thought it would. And on the bright side I have discovered that the mixture of fuel and exhaust makes me almost as groggy and passive as Ambien.

The training went well. The flight back was similar only on a slightly newer plane. I would place its construction sometime in the early 1970's. The seats actually worked in this one which was a bonus.