I was never a good flyer but I had no other choice than to go to Russia and help the team in chernobyl looking for radiation eating bacteria. As an undergrad I went to the great garbage patch to look for plastic eating bacteria. Of course I never got shit for credit but now we have some little plastic eaters to help chew up some of the tons of garbage sent into the ocean every year. Sometimes life is more about doing the greater good than getting the recognition you deserve. Shit not outlets and my ipod just died. Now there is nothing to distract me from the woman freaking out and screaming “WERE ALL GONNA DIE” every damn time the plane hits turbulence. I’m good with roller coasters but this shit has been going on for the last 3 hours and I’m starting to get sick. Looking out the window I know this isn’t going to end anytime soon. The lightning illuminates the layers of clouds in brilliant colors I have never seen before. We are sandwiched between two layers of clouds with the funnel clouds going between them. The purples and grays are somehow beautiful and yet frightening at the same time. This view is so alien to me that I am not sure we are even on earth any more.
Someone is shaking me. I must have fallen asleep. Thank the gods that the 18 hour flight is finally over. I thought it would never end. Now all I have to do is hold my bladder while landing, find a bathroom, then my luggage and hope to whatever gods exist that I have a ride and don’t need to find my way to wherever the team is meeting up. Why don’t the flight attendants wake you up with enough time to get to the bathroom before landing? Too bad I’m not male and can use a flight sickness bag in my moment of need.
The damn signs aren’t in english hopefully I can find another bathroom soon that one had a line around the damn block. Why are women always either looking for a bathroom or standing in line for one.?
By the gods I found one. I feel so much better. I was practically full to bursting. Shit, I am in the mens room. I will just try to act casual and hopefully leave without notice. Leave it to me to find the only men’s room around. Great now some guy is yelling at me in some kind of angry gibberish, I think I will just walk away and try to ignore him. Damn I am tired, but at least I got some sleep on that plane. That crazy woman shouldn’t fly. I bet there are cruises that could have gotten her here without all the damn screaming. I understand when little kids scream, they can’t help it. But adults shouldn’t scream that much on a flight. I was surprised no one sedated her. Either way I can only hope that I won’t be on the plane with her on the way back home.
Getting to the hotel room was largely without any events and the hotel is nicer than I expected. Neither do I have to share a room or actively contemplate sleeping in my garment bag.
The chernobyl site is still highly radioactive so I have to wear a radiation suit which is always so much fun. The allergies combined with the chron’s disease is not a good combination. There is no wiper on the inside of the helmet so if you sneeze you are stuck looking at it for the rest of the day. But that is nothing compared to the chron’s which means that I have almost no control over shitting myself suddenly without much warning. So I have to wear adult diapers which doesn’t help much. With the smell at least. If only there was some way to cut that awful rank which usually happens exactly 15 min after I get fully suited up. Which leaves me with about 5 hours before I can do anything about it. So all together I don’t really like wearing radiation suits.
So I am to walk around in my assigned square with a geiger counter to try and see if there are spots with less or no radiation. The human team will be walking in the “safe Zone” where I theorize that we will find radiation eating bacteria. The mechanical team is a bunch of radio guided robots equipped with geiger counters and could probably do our work in half the time but work is work so why not. Maybe the human error is why they are looking for. Two days of walking in one small marked off square after another looking for a major change in radiation levels. Damn this is boring. I don’t even get to have music while out here.
There is nothing alive out here. No weeds, no animals, not even any insects. Ants are all over the world yet there are none here. This is the strangest, emptiest place I have ever been. The entire place looks like people could be hiding just around the corner. As if we are hunting for faeries and we found their secret homes but they are just around the corner watching us. This is a really creepy feeling and I really don’t like being alone out here. The children’s dolls laying as if dropped in haste and are waiting to be collected by the child’s parents. There are even toys in the sandbox I had to walk through earlier. Looking at them was gut wrenching. I kept wondering where the kids were, did they get out safely, did they find their parents? I know a lot of people got sick during the accident and many of them died. It is very surreal walking where children may have died. There are still clothes in the streets and cars abandoned. The buildings still have food in them. Everyone left in such haste. But there are no animals around, no insects, nothing moves but the wind.
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