WHAT A RUSSIA!!!!

When we rolled into sunny and funny St. Petersburg, we could have sworn that the city itself opened its outstretched arms to us and pulled us into a sensual embrace, as if to say, "Thank you L. Thomps and V. Dubbs, for believing in me, and for making the perilous transsiberian journey to be here---to be here with me."

V.Dubbs wasn't buyin' that shit, though. She was quick to remind the city of St. Petersburg that we had also endured Canada and all of that bullshit before we even crossed into Siberia! St. Petersburg grew very quiet. DAMMIT. We were off to such a great friendship before VeeTard had to remind them that a place like Canada existed.

FAUX PAUX.

What Ronny failed to realize is that Russia is one of those fun and fancy-free nations that likes to believe everything is all rainbows and smiles and Purple Hearts showering over a field of Unicorn horns filled with Svedka Vodka. They don't like to be reminded of the suffering of citizens in countries like Canada, you know, what with the endless lines at hospitals to receive medical attention after brutal chainsaw massacres/logrolling gone bad/inevitable French overthrow of Montreal. So it was pretty tactless of us to bring it up, and forced me into a difficult ass-kissing situation.

I quickly recovered by presenting the mayor, Valentina Matviyenko, with a bottle of castor oil. And, true to form, V Dubbs jigged like a jigger ought to, which is great because after the twelve hours of driving and not finding anything good in northern Russia, I was starting to really blame her for everything bad that had happened. I also resented her. She kept saying that I was redundant, and I didn't like that. But don't worry guys, it's okay. I called her ignorant and irrelevant, and then we just didn't talk for the rest of the drive!
Anyways, Valentina was thrilled (and she did give us permission to call her Val, but we told her it confused us, because of Val's diner in North Andover. She completely understood...or at least we thought she did....until....

What are the odds that a woman can be both mayor of world class city, AND the owner of a DINER?!!!! Man, Russia is so progressive!!!! It's a beacon of light for all of us hopeless American girls toiling away in the Lowell textile mills yearning for a brighter future for our daughters and granddaughters.....and Ronny and I get to be the harbingers of this beautiful notion.

WE WILL NOT STOP UNTIL WE GET SUFFRAGE!

By the way, Val's Beetroot Borsche is DELISH.

Dah Islands

After our adventures at sea, Lthomps and I found ourselves on Ellesmere Island. And when I say we found ourselves I am not trying to convey the fact that we were on the island (which we were), but rather I mean that we found ourselves. We found ourselves...in that other way (see: The Tao of Pooh).

We were pretty lonely on Ellesmere Island as the population doesn't even hit 150. I have a population of 150 requirement for me to not be lonely, so yeah this wasnt cool. Also, people on this friggen island are either scientists or ruthless Dorset hunters. Also some people referred to themselves as "neoeskimos" which hit a little too close to neo-tribalists for our liking. In any event, we were constantly dodging bullets which the hunters claimed to be aiming at a mysterious moose behind us. I never once so this so-called moose, I think these people wanted to kill us. Actually, they eventually told us this over a couple of drinks, we all had a good laugh.

Now, I feel I must confess something, I think I may be giving a biased account of this visit. You see, I am a Debby Downer, always have been. But Lauren is a Positive Penny (???) and she had a god damn blast on Ellesmere. She danced around, she was constantly smiling, she was finally able to forgive her second grade teacher. I have no idea what made her so happy. When I asked her all she said was, "It's the colors, all the colors, white and blue...". The thing about Ellesmere Island is that there are basically no colors. But w/e.

After we had a complete tour of the island (which was horrendous) we had to get busy constructing a raft upon which we would float gracefully into SIBERIA/RUSSIA. Oh my God, you don't even KNOW how we felt. So close to our destination on such a long journey. I was grinning ear tah ear!

The raft we had used to get to Ellesmere would work as a nice skeleton for the one we would take over to Siberia. But we would definitely need to make some adjustments. For one thing, we needed some steel and a Sail. We also needed a gun to ward of jellyfish. We got busy constructing our new raft.

Three days later and we had a beautiful raft. Now, the easy part: sail that shit across the Arctic Ocean and land somewhere in Russia, then drive to St. Petersburg and LIVE IT UP. We said goodbye to Ellesmere and began our journey. .a journey which was incredibly strange in that it was not strange at all. You'd think two teenage girls and a nissan versa rafting across the Arctic Ocean would create some bomb-ass stories, but no. The trip was pretty self explanatory, we sailed, there was water, there was no storm, there was no great white shark, wtf. Well, Lauren did catch some fucking salmon or something at one point. Big whoop, I catch that shit all the time in Lake Cochichewick.

And then we were in Siberia. Well actually, we weren't quite in Siberia. But we also weren't quite in European Russia either, at least in my opinion, and also in Dostoyevsky's opinion (it is worth mentioning that Joseph Conrad had a different opinion but he is technically an English author so fuck him.... Tolstoy was just real stony-eyed about the whole subject). The town is called Naryan-Mar, or as Lauren kept saying, "Maryanne Nar". Dumb ass..

From here we filled the Nissan Versa (still in perfect condition) with gas and hit the road for St. Petersburg. We drove all night and made it there in 12 hours.

PHASE TWO COMMENCE, et. al, i.e, What the fuck now?!

So, V-D and I were real idiot assholes about this whole procedure. WE TRIED TO PUT MORE IN OUR MOUTHS THAN WE COULD CHEW--or in Ronny's case, and mine sometimes, and maybe even yours if you're into that-SWALLOW.
We packed the snacks. We consorted with Canadian locals. We prepared questions in case we met our maker. Can you guess what we didn't bring?

A raft. Which we would need if we were gonna island hop from Ellesmere to Russia.

F-U-C-?

THEN I REMEMBERED!!!

Sometimes, you really do have the tools you need to succeed, even when you think you don't.
Remember how we brought goods to trade with the Inuits/Russians in case of emergencies? And remember how one of those things was Ryan McCann, Spanish teacher extraordinaire, et. al?

Well, we didn't need him for anything.

BUT! I opened the collector's edition Blue Crush DVD and discovered that Kayla put the wrong movie back in.....that's right. in it's place, was

Without a Paddle 2!!!!!!!!!!!



We realized we had to get clever, just like those wild and crazy men did in Nature's Calling.
This was pretty much our opportunity to correct the chauvinist, anti-neo-tribalist and anti-Americans/Marines ideologies that we had been struggling against since high school.

We built our own goddamn raft. And we FJIORGED our way north up the Baffin Sea inlet.

Unbelievable pun just now.

Some things we encountered in the stormy Baffin Sea, which by the way, took us maybe three hours to sail:
1. Nothing.
2. Ice.
3. Icebergs.
4. Iceberg lettuce growing in its natural habitat.
5. Jack Dawson.
6. The Heart of the Ocean, which those assholes in the movie were right--he did steal it. Rose should have let him drown in that room where he was handcuffed to the pole. But actually, no, because then we wouldn't have gotten to see Kate Winslet swinging that axe and dripping like a wet tee-shirt contestant, 1912-style.

BUT I DIGRESS.