Go With The Flow 1

Travel is about experiences - good and otherwise.  And in the end, an "otherwise" experience, which leads to a story later, is good as well.  One just needs to go with the flow while traveling and see where the stream takes you.  Here's the first of an occassional series on Going With The Flow.

The dozen or so of us had already made our way through passport control at Siberia's Magadan Airport. Our Alaska Airlines 727 was on the ground ready to take us on the next leg of our journey to Khabarovsk.  As departure time get closer and closer, there didn't seem to be much happening either near the aircraft, which was parked out on the tarmac, nor in our waiting area.  Departure time came and went and finally the Alaska Air agent popped by to tell us that "there was a problem."  Not with the aircraft, but with Soviet customs and immigration.  It seems that the chief who had approved of this flight was out of town on business and his assistant had not been briefed on this most serious of issues - foreigners taking a foreign airline on a domestic flight.  No way.  No how.  Our agent was "working the issue" and told us to relax.  In the meantime, through the bank of windows overlooking the tarmac and runways, we saw "our" Alaska 727 taxi away from its stand and before we knew it, it was airborne.  "Cool" was my first thought - this should be interesting.  "Panic" was the first thought of some of my fellow travelers (no, not in the Communist sense!).  The agent came back a few minutes later and said that our luggage was on its was to Khabarovsk on the Alaska flight and that we would be on our way shortly - on Aeroflot.  The "Panic" folks went into high gear - "We're going to die.  All Aeroflot planes crash.  No way am I getting on Aeroflot.  How dare this happen to us.  I knew we should have taken this tour."  Of course, in the hour or so that of al this transpired, a half-dozen or more Aeroflot jets and landing and taken off, and not one had crashed!  I was getting more excited by the moment - another experience - another airline - another aircraft type!  Yes.  We then noticed a dozen or so folks getting off of an Aeroflot jet.  Our jet!  Basically, Aeroflot kicked off the 12 passengers in the 1st two rows of coach on their flight to Khabarovsk and sold the seats (I'm sure at a greatly inflated price) to Alaska.  We boarded, many reluctently, to the intense stares of the other 150+ coach passengers.  The doors closed, the plane shot down the bumpy runway and 90 minutes later we touch down in Khabarovsk - we didn't crash, we enjoyed (or some of us enjoyed) our snack of a roll and a boiled egg, and our luggage was waiting for us.  And the group, both the panicked folks and the cool folks, had another story to tell when they got home.  Its what traveling is about.  Cool.