The Agony and the Ecstasy, Part 1

February, 2004

by: Jack Hughes

The Agony

Many of you know that in early December Sean Cullen, the chairman of our Missions Committee and I traveled halfway around the world to Samara, Russia. Samara is located about 600 miles southeast of the capital city of Moscow. Though not very well known, Samara is the second largest city in Russia with a population of over one million people.

Now you might be wondering what it would be like to travel to Samara, Russia. Simply put, the trip is agonizing. Even with modern jets that fly nearly six hundred miles an hour, it is a test of endurance to get there. You begin your journey at the airport where security is tighter than the lug nuts on your car wheels. You stand in line, check in your baggage, and if you have eight extra boxes for missionary families to take with you like we did, your time in the check–in line becomes a feat of navigation, quantum physics, and brute strength. Sean thought he would save a few dollars by purchasing an over the shoulder computer bag. Soon, that side of his body was leaning like the Tower of Pisa. I tried to encourage Sean by reminding him how easy my rolling computer bag was to maneuver through the airport.

Since we had so many boxes, we were asked to leave the standard ticket line and go to another part of the airport where they would do a CAT scan of our luggage with giant x–ray machines to see if we had any contraband or illegal items. Unfortunately they confiscated Sean's hand held surface–to–air missiles. He tried to persuade the security guards not to take them by pointing out that his missiles were approved by terrorists around the world and that the “safe and sane” sticker must have fallen off, but they didn't believe him. Then back to the ticket line again to show them that our boxes and luggage passed inspection. Finally, we were officially checked and I started to effortlessly wheel my computer bag towards the departure gate while Sean adjusted his computer bag from side to side. I kept reminding him how easy my bag rolled across the glassy tile floors of the airport.

When you fly to Samara, Russia, your departure gate is always at the furthest end of the airport. When you finally arrive at your gate, you wait. Airports, though not traditionally places of comfort and refuge, do have some redeeming value. Sermon illustrations abound in airports. There is the stressed out company employee talking on the phone with an ear bud. He is balancing his lap top computer on his knees. His right hand is frantically looking for information and his left hand grips a triple tall mocha latte. He's working hard on that next big sale but for some reason you feel sorry for him. You wonder if he has a life.

Then there is the mother of three traveling back east to visit the grandparents. Her husband couldn't get as much time off and he will be flying to meet them in a few days, so she is going it alone with the children. She has a six–month–old screaming baby boy propped up on her hip. Her three–year–old daughter comes down with a severe case of selective hearing and is running around the airport laughing, looking desperately for a kidnapper. Meanwhile the woman's five–year–old son has his nose smashed against the window staring into a jet engine of a Boeing 777 wondering how much power that jet engine has and how fast he could go if one of those babies was lashed onto his bicycle. Then there is a man slumped in his uncomfortable airport chair as if someone let half the air out of him. He is a very weary traveler, who has been traveling or trying to travel to his destination for more than two days. Mechanical failures, meteorological acts of God, and scheduling conflicts have turned this pour soul into a dejected airport orphan. At first he tried being patient. When that didn't work he resorted to firmly reminding the ticket counter people that he was a paying customer. When that didn't work he tried yelling, screaming, and embarrassing himself in front of a sea of strangers, but still he sits on a hard, black vinyl multi–seat airport bench, waiting. His face is so pale it looks like he was attacked by a swarm of blood sucking leaches. There are seats available on both sides of him, but no one would ever sit by this man, he looks like a grenade with the pin pulled.

Boarding finally begins and busy business executives with first class tickets wait to get on first and sit in their first rate aircraft approved Lazy Boy recliners in the section of the airplane where you get served first and deplane first. As part of the flight torture, they make you walk past the first class passengers as they lounge in their luxurious armchairs. You quickly pass by them and through the business class section which has slightly less comfortable oversized chairs with many extras like personal reading lights, large padded arm rests, and seats that lay all the way flat just in case you want to take a snooze in the horizontal position. Then you enter your temporary home, the economy or vertical sardine section. As you search for your seat you begin to have a conversation with God about how nice it would be not to have to sit next to anyone, but just then the flight attendant reminds you that the plane is completely full. You think of Job and how Isaiah said God's ways are not your ways. You begin to wonder what kind of mood God is in today and you pray that He doesn't sit you next to anyone too scary. Sean had to sit next to me.

Economy class has three different kinds of seats for someone who is six foot four inches tall. First there is the deceptive window seat, which looks good from the aisle and yet includes a mandatory trip to the chiropractor after the flight because your head is positioned at a 45–degree angle the entire flight. Secondly, there is the middle seat, which is ten inches narrower than your shoulders are wide. If you sit there, you have to remind yourself of how Houdini dislocated his shoulders to escape from narrow, claustrophobic places. Finally there is the aisle seat, which is also deceptive. When you sit in the aisle seat, you lean away from the middle seat to keep from touching the stranger next to you. The problem is aisles are thoroughfares, especially for flight attendants with food and drink carts. Every few minutes someone or some thing runs into the part of your upper body, which hangs into the aisle.

If insomnia is the inability to sleep, then is somnia the ability to sleep? If so, sitting in the aisle seat is a cure for somnia. But even if you were not being bumped frequently, sleeping is still very difficult when your head sticks up past the top of the airplane seat ten inches. When you try to disregard your mother's exhortations to sit up straight and try to slump in your chair so your head has something to rest on, you realize that your knees are already touching the seat in front of you and that slumping is a physical impossibility. You realize this will be a stay–awake flight.

Eventually, the plane begins to taxi out onto the runway so it too can wait in line before take off. The flight attendants go through their ritual of explaining what to do in the unlikely case of a water landing or if the side of the airplane blows out and you lose cabin pressure and need oxygen. You wonder if there has ever been a water landing that anyone ever survived. After you get into the air, they have small TV screens on the back of every chair, which tell you that the outside air temperature at an altitude of 40,000 feet is 80 degrees below zero. You wonder what the chill factor is if the outside temperature is 80 degrees below zero and you are traveling 600 miles per hour. You wonder how long can a person can survive at those temperatures if the side of the airplane were to blow out? Would your arms stay limber long enough for you to put on your oxygen mask? Sean and I like to talk about things like this; it helps keep us awake. Soon everyone around us had their headphones on and turned up. We couldn't figure out why.

From Los Angeles International airport you fly to Chicago's O'Hare or Washington's Dulles international airport. You then get off your plane and travel to the furthest end of the airport again to catch your connecting flight to Frankfurt Germany. You go through the same procedure as described above. The primary difference is that the first leg of your flight only lasted five hours while the second leg of your flight lasts twelve hours, unless of course you have a water landing.

During the twelve–hour leg of your flight they keep you fed with airplane food which is a very interesting variety of food. It appears to be a mixture of fast food, TV dinners, and military rations. You wonder who makes this food and where it comes from. In between meals you read, watch movies, and listen to music and if you're short, you sleep. If you are tall, you watch others sleep. When you realize the lights in the cabin have been turned off and everyone is asleep but you, it makes you feel special. Again, sermon illustrations abound.

Finally you arrive in Germany where you deplane again, go through the airport to the furthest gate, and catch another connecting flight to Samara. By this time sleep deprivation has set in. When flying east for that long you burn up two days in a 26 hour period. Your body isn't sure what time of day it is. You're not sure what time of day it is. One thing you know is that you are so tired it hurts. As you make your way to the next gate, you realize that no one is speaking in English. You have become a foreigner. Though Germany is a very advanced and modern country, they still have mechanical flight information systems that are constantly clicking and clacking as the numbers change. By this time Sean's ten–pound shoulder hung computer bag felt like a large sack of lead bars. Mine was still rolling along quite smoothly and effortlessly.

After reaching the gate at the far end of the airport, we waited to board our flight to Samara. We eventually boarded the plane, found our seats and the flight attendants proceeded to give instructions in German, English, and Russian. One more four hour flight and we would be at our destination. Again, the plane was full, our seats were cramped, our bodies hurt, and we were fed another strange meal. It contained foods that Sean and I had never seen or tasted before. For the next four hours we looked like the typical weary airport orphans. Sean tried to encourage me by falling asleep just to show me up close how wonderful it was to sleep when you are tired. I thought of reminding him how easy my computer bag rolled along when he woke up but forgot.

When you land in Samara international airport, you wonder if they made a mistake. There are no large airplane hangers. A few planes are parked on the snow packed run way. They send out a taxi to push you into your snow packed parking spot on the airstrip and then a hinged bus that smells like it has some serious diesel fuel leaks transports you to the terminal. You have to stand and try to keep your balance, as the bus is a standing room only bus. You look out the window as you head for the terminal and notice that in Samara, Russia they load the luggage into the back of a dump truck, but strangely, it ceases to amaze you. You are now in the zen of travel. Sleep deprivation has caused you to enter into a state of semiconscious “whateverness”. The bus stops, you enter the terminal, and it is nothing like the modern Frankfurt terminal. It is small, the floors are concrete, the windows are dirty, the walls are covered with dark paneling and brown anodized aluminum.

There are no shops, no flashy signs advertising anything, no television screens playing the news, no hard black vinyl seats, only a single line that goes down the only corridor. As you wait in line you see the vestiges of the Cold War. Alarm wires on the windows are falling off, a single 15 year old non–functioning computer monitor sits on the counter to give the false impression that this is a modern airport. The video surveillance equipment is almost antique and the wires are disconnected. It looks like you have entered the “Twilight Zone.” They make you walk through a scanner but it isn't turned on, in fact the side is broken open, and it is unplugged and tilted to one side.

Finally you get to the place in the line where you have to show them your customs form. Of course the customs form is so nondescript you can't figure out what they are trying to ask you. The immigration agent asks you lots of questions in Russian but you don't know what he is saying. You begin to wish you had the gift of tongues or the interpretation of tongues. Finally, with the help of hand gestures and international grunts you get through immigration. Then comes customs. You gather your boxes and luggage together which have been delivered by the dump truck to the pick up area. You find two small baggage carts and as you approach customs they look mad. Their facial expressions seem to be saying, “How dare you bring so many boxes into our country this late at night.”

They ask you what is in the boxes, you tell them you have presents in the boxes and gifts for the Baptist churches and missionaries. You can tell they either don't believe you or they are dying of curiosity to see what kind of presents Americans bring to Russia. So they make you celebrate Christmas right there in customs. We tried to tell them that it was American culture not to open presents without your name on them. At this time one of the missionaries showed up and got to open up some of his Christmas presents early. Once their curiosity was satisfied, and Sean and I were able to see what one of the missionaries was going to get for Christmas, they let us through customs after taking money for customs dues. We were finally in Russia but still not to our destination. After an hour drive we finally reached the missionary home where we would be staying for the week.

And this is the “agony” of traveling to Samara, Russia. But what about the ecstasy? Well, you will have to wait until the next Calvary Review for that.