The last year of the last millennium. This was my first spring expedition to the Arctic. April, around white and white, daytime bright sun and heat under -25 degrees, at night huge starry sky, often polar radiance and cool, up to -40. Sometimes a purple flies and then everything is white not only on the ground, but everywhere, such a 3D-white world. Our task is to drill several wells at a point located 400 km from the village. To get there and work there takes 3 weeks. A sanitary-tractor train is equipped - a tractor-blatant is headed, a residential balcony, a sanitary with equipment and a drill, behind - another sanitary with a generator and fuel. All this thunderstorming structure is slowly rolling over snow tents up to a half-meter high and, swinging through the dry snow, with a speed of 10-15 kilometers per hour slips where it needs to be. Driving hard - every couple of minutes on each snow flood, a beam with a ugly scroll rises a little up, and then crashes down with a short thunder. We slipped in one direction for almost 4 days... Smokers sometimes climbed in the open door of the balcony, and smoked, but this was considered dangerous – it was possible when the balcony fell again from the swelling to not hold back and fly out of board. Sometimes, when the movement slowed down a little, you could jump out on the hard snow and run next to the slippery balk, melt. However, running around for a long time was difficult - although speed and small, but running on uneven snow is very uncomfortable.
To get a little distracted, I often sat with the tractorist in the cabin and monitored the direction of our movement via GPS, because there are no landmarks around, especially if it runs.
So, we sit somehow with a tractorist, driving in a light purge to the north. The darkness begins. Everything is shrinking and shrinking like it has been lately. The tractorist turns to me to ask something, and suddenly I see his eyes expanding, looking somewhere past me, and he begins to point with his beard and nose to the side, without removing his hands from the lever. I look around, expecting to see UFOs, snowmen, a grandmother in a stupa, or something else, but I see an even more surprising thing – in a parallel course, making giant jumps on the snowflakes, the tractor is hitting the door! The door swings a little, then slides, then stands up almost vertically, but persecutes us persistently! I was slightly stunned by an incomprehensible horror, I turn to the tractorist and understand that he is about in the same state trying to increase the speed so that it does not catch us. But the door continues to bear behind us, and at some point, through the hustle of the diesel and the hustle of the hooks, we clearly hear that the door is very loud and very loud! I scream to the tractorist, "Stand up!" because the alien door should not be able to express it, so it's its own door, suddenly it needs help (although it's unclear how to provide first aid to the door? Has anyone taught that? When the tractor almost stopped, the door caught us and the plush fell on the snow. And on it fell our Chief Engineer, who was bringing this door into motion. He rolled and breathed like a cough thrown on the shore, smiled meaninglessly and continued to quietly mate. We brought him on the door to the balk and sprinkled with tea for more than an hour.
As the investigation showed, the Chief stood with the door open and, holding it, smoked. The people in the balk are who dryh, who read... On the next smash the door was knocked down from the cock and it crashed next to the balk. The chief, as a diligent owner, could not allow the loss of a strategically important door and jumped out after it. Having raised it, he realized with horror that it did not change the situation: now the balok has lost not only the door, but also him. It was meaningless, and when the closing sails passed by him, the Chief made a somewhat strange, but quite obvious decision from his point of view – he grabbed the door in a clutch and rushed with it to catch the tractor. Running with the door is not easy at all, and especially in the dark on uneven snow, melting hands in all directions. To drop the door and catch the tractor The main thing didn't even come to mind - he and the door were inseparable. He managed to do the impossible – he almost surpassed the tractor and at the same time rearranged it to be noticed! Back, we hanged the door for three... The chief after that another year two did not smoke, said that it does not work: as soon as the cigarette gets, so the hands themselves to the width of the door are spread.