Gotta Love Long Weekends

It's been a rather crazy week, so I'm a little behind on this one. Just a quick rundown of last weekend - nothing too terribly eventful. This coming weekend should be pretty low-key since I'm duty officer and need to be available should anything come up.

The hash went off without a hitch - and I managed to dodge all of the open manhole covers that we passed. For part of it we ran along an abandoned railroad track, which was kind of cool and as always, it was good exercise. After the hash, we had a real treat, as one of the hashers threw a fancy garden party that night. Stephanie came with me for this one and we really enjoyed ourselves. It was fun to dress up and enjoy good wine and tasty food. A lot of our friends were there, so it was a lot of fun.

On Sunday I went for the hike. We didn't go too far out of the city, but it felt like we did. We hiked up into the mountains to a little waterfall.

It was a fairly strenuous hike and pretty treacherous in some places. There was a very rickety bridge,

and at one point, a cow charged up the narrow trail we were on and we had to dive out of the way. Then, coming down, I lost my footing and barely caught myself. We also had a guest on this hike - a local dog who came out to see what we were doing and wound up following us the whole way.

As usual the scenery was great and you can see more by following this link.

Hike 101109 JPGS

The thing I like best about the hikes is when we reach a summit and it feels like you're standing on top of the world. It's hard to capture in pictures, but it's a great feeling.

On Monday, I had a little more work done on the car. Nothing major, it just needs a new belt and to replace a ball bearing in the one of the rear tires. I have to say, having 4 wheel drive comes in handy with the state of our driveway. I have to use it pretty much everyday when I leave the house. On Monday, when we were leaving, there was a ridiculous traffic jam epicentered right at the end of our driveway. The construction crews were working right in front of the house and rather than take turns for each direction of traffic, people doubled up in both lanes and refused to let anyone through. Then, people started trying to drive around on the sidewalk and through our driveway, but that didn't work too well either. Then, people started getting out of their cars and walking up to the jam as if that would help. I don't know how it happened, but someone finally moved and we got out. It didn't help that the people working on the road have destroyed all but two entrances to our street, so traffic is pretty much always a mess.

After the adventures in car ownership, we tried to go to this wholesale store down by the train station we had heard about. It took some asking but we found it. The plan was to load up on beer and juice so that we can be better hosts. When we were walking around, we noticed these shady guys looking at us and then talking to each other and then following us. It got pretty creepy and we were about to call the mobile patrol. But it turned out that they just wanted some cash to help us carry our purchases - and not too much either. Trying to explain to them that the way they were acting was creepy, in Russian, was no easy task. In the end, we bought so much that our car was riding low enough to scrape if we stopped too fast.

Later, at the supermarket, I found one of my favorite discoveries... 'Barf' laundry detergent. Barf means snow in Tajik, which is fine, but I don't know why they right it in English. Anyway, it makes me laugh every time I see it. It's also fun to talk about all the barf on the mountains, or how difficult it is to drive when the roads are covered in barf, or the idea of a barf-ball fight. You get the idea.

Monday afternoon, I played some tennis with a friend from work - I can even say that I'm improving - before we went out for a very good Indian meal to welcome some new arrivals before finishing the night taking turns on Guitar Hero and playing with his dogs.