Flashback

Maybe it's the full moon we have right now, I don't know. But I've had two amazing runs in less than 4 days and I don't know how that happened!

Today I woke at 4:50 AM, the 4th morning in a row that I've woken up before 5:00. Got out for my run a little late (6:30) but felt very good. Took Daisy with me and after wrestling with her twice to get her harness on (she pulled out of it the first time), I headed down the road at a pretty good clip.

I took my Ipod, of course, and a song came on that I didn't recognize. It didn't have many words but had a disco-kind of beat. Reminded me of the Russian techno music blaring from the back speakers in the car we rode in to my daughter's orphanage when we first met her. My mind drifted back in time....

It was late January in 2002...we had traveled many days to get to a remote village in eastern Ukraine, 30 miles from the Russian border. We stayed in Lugansk, a blue-collar, industrial city which was about a 40-minute drive from the village. It was bitter cold and the sky was endlessly grey. I don't think we saw the sun the entire time we were in Ukraine.

Every day we went to the orphanage and I'll never forget that drive. Our driver was a dark-haired, chain-smoking man with shifty eyes who stopped at various places to secretly exchange something with other dark-haired, chain-smoking men who stood on street corners. I'll never forget seeing them huddling together - all of them dressed in black, their hands going in and out of pockets quickly as they glanced behind them to see who was looking. What were they exchanging? Money? Drugs? Cigarettes? I'm not sure I want to know.

Then he'd bounce back in the car, crank the techno music, and we'd take off. He drove so fast that I closed my eyes and prayed - really. I glanced at the spedometer and saw the needle hit 140....but soon realized that was kilometers per hour, not miles per hour! Still, it was very, very fast.

And it's not like we were in a comfy SUV or well-built Honda. Oh nooooo....we were in one of those tiny little european contraptions that makes you feel like the door will fall off when you slam it.

We flew down that country road so fast that I honestly thought I was going to die. The day we brought our daughter back to the house where we were staying I told the interpreter to tell him to SLOW DOWN and turn down the music! He looked at me like I was from another planet.

After waiting as long as we had and traveling that far (and to be quite honest, paying that much) to find our daughter, there was no way I was going to die in a car crash because some punk couldn't obey the speed limit.

Interestingly enough, this rough-looking KGB wannabe driver turned into a major teddy bear when we met Katerina. He was smitten by her - he actually told us that. He told the interpreter to tell us that "the other kids are nice but he'd take this one hands-down"!

(That's him in the picture above, see Katerina pick his nose! The other pic the long road to the orphanage).

Ok, I digressed big time....my mind tends to wander when I'm running....