Beginning of the Millennium. We work in the Eastern Arctic, a base in Tiksi. In those years, the launch of our expeditions was mainly carried out by military-transport aircraft - they negotiated through some intermediaries with the pilots of the garrison and carried themselves and cargo on the AN-12. Often these boats were flying and the military with families, and just the Tixins, who needed to. The departure from the middle lane was from one of the airfields of long-range aviation, we usually flew from Kaluga or Novgorod regions. Accordingly, when you fly west, the landing airport is completely unknown, it can change straight in flight. In Vorkut there was usually a landing at a refueling station.
Once the fate failed and I had to evacuate from Tiksi in the middle of the field season. The pilots told me when they were flying west, I came with a backpack. In the AN-12 passengers usually fly in a small cabin, which is immediately behind the cockpit, and further, to the ramp in the tail - the cargo compartment, it is not sealed. There were 28 or 30 people in the hermocabine, I don’t remember exactly – it was for 6 landing places. We fly standing, pressing together until we lose individual shape. At the sitting seats - wives of soldiers with small children, who alternately worship. Adults also want to, but they are embarrassed. Sometimes standing at the door in the cargo compartment weakens its screw lock, and then everyone greedy inhale the air coming from there. Together with it, heavy concentrated waves of fish spirit enter the hermocabine, because the board is half full of ice cream fish for relatives, superiors, comrades and many others. It is impossible and cold to breathe for a long time, the doors are closed, after half an hour the cycle is repeated. Flight to Vorkuta 5 hours. When I landed there, I had sick hands pressed by the neighbors. For a half-hour refuelling, everybody was scattered on the strip and rejoiced in freedom. Then again in the air. This time, we sat under the rubble in 4 hours. During the whole time from Tixie – about 10 hours – no crumbs in my mouth, because my sushi was crushed while trampling still in Tixie, and all the time standing. Almost everyone meets with relatives or someone else, and I don’t even know where to go from the airport, how to get to Moscow. I asked somebody, and they threw my hand to the side of the highway. I go on the runway in the dark, stunned from the 9 o'clock rush of the engines, with the parts of the body still on the right after the pressure, I think how to get further...
What made me turn, I still don’t know. But I turned around – and he catches me along the AN-12 lane and rubs the air with screws just 20 meters behind me. How did I not hear him? I jump to the side and blink with my hand purely reflexively. And then the unexpected thing happens: the AN catches me, brakes, the side loop opens, the trap falls down and on it – the board mechanic, who runs to me and ears at my ear: “......... we are half behind you, we don’t know how to drive off the lane! Why are you going here and you’re still running with your legs? ......” I wore in response that with Tixy arrived, here the first time, I need to Moscow, I go to the highway, where they sent... He wildly looks at me and screams: “Come, let’s throw it to Stupino! Go ahead quickly!” Not having time to realize what and how, I climb the stairs into the hermocabine... And there is paradise! The hermocabine is all sliced, light tone, on the left edge - a rolling table, there are DIVANCHIS! On the table – giant red tomatoes, cucumbers, some greens, and behind the table is a very nice woman sits a little older than me at the time. Bordmech sits me at the table, says to fly 10 minutes and hides in the cabin. I am in complete stupor – from the previous hellish AN-12 got to heaven and it is also AN-12! A woman smiles at me and offers me a tomato...These 10 minutes of flight were the best minutes in the air of my life! Tomatoes are the most delicious fruit in the world. A free hermocabine, a beautiful lady (it turned out that she was the wife of either an assailant or a second pilot). The air story! But it quickly ended, I was landed in Stupino and I continued to get on the electric car. And only in it to me somehow unexpectedly came that from under Ryazan to Stupino I actually got by car stop on the plane! And so far it is my coolest stop :) The stop of the passenger train "Nerungri-Moscow" on the BAE, which led my rating of the stop, firmly went to the backdrop. I don’t know, but I rarely go to space. :)