I didn't do it!

Yes, welcome to Moscow - and their new "you break it you bought it" policy. I made it to Russia this morning, not too worse for wear. Actually, I had more trouble just getting my Russian visa than I did actually getting into the country itself. My visa application was held up for a couple weeks because - as I eventually found out - of inconsistencies in my signature (that is, my signature is really bad - somewhere my dad is smiling and thinking back on something similar happening to me in India years ago when I couldn't duplicate my signature and thus couldn't cash my traveller's checks. In this case I ended up having to refill out the form, write a letter to the Russian consul general, have it notarized and then over-nighted to the CIBT folks (who normally do my visa requests). Finally, about a week before I was due to take off, the consul general himself called me to talk about the fact the signature on my visa form looked different than the signature on my passport - I told him that about six months ago I decided to try and clean up my signature a little bit because it had disintegrated over the years - he was happy with that explanation and my visa arrived.

The flight was uneventful - about eight and a half hours non-stop from JFK to Moscow. I had talked myself into a bulkhead seat, always much appreciated, although this didn't actually provide that much more room and the video screen was broken (no individual monitors or dreamed of movie library), but there was no one next to me and that let me stretch out a bit, so I slept more than I normally do on flights like this. When I stumbled off the plane this morning, however, the reserved ride wasn't there, which led me to have to call the hotel - and there was a brief appearance of the ugly American (most posture than substance, but, sadly, sometimes it is necessary) and a new ride arrived and I got a nice room up grade at the hotel - the Novotel Moscow Centre, which is really nice, good workout center, and located right on top of a Russian metro station - highly recommended.

Anyway, I'm here, and I'll talk more the day in a few minutes - just wanted to post this picture. It's me standing in front of the world's largest bell at the Kremlin - I didn't actually break it (if I were my son I'd have just blamed his grandfather for it, and my father would have gladly accepted blame - reflecting back on a famous/infamous event from my son's childhood when he got caught unrolling an entire roll of toilet paper - when I asked him if he had done it he said, "no, Papa did it." Being a dutiful father I said we'd just have to call my Dad - who lived around 80 miles away - and check on his story. Of course, my father, without blinking an eye, owned up to the fact that he had done it. Anyway, this is the world's largest bell, although it was never used - apparently when it was being cooled it came into contact with water inadvertently and a piece broke off. There's some important relation to my life there somewhere.

OK, apparently the bell picture won't load - I'll try that later. Groan.