Monday, September 05, 2005
Today's Trip Post
Today is the last day of the St Petersburg break -- tomorrow we return to that most lovely of cities. But let us look for a moment at tour life -- we looked at the ship, but let's look at the other most ubiquitous part of life when touring -- the bus.
We did not take any actual pictures on the bus on our trip -- these are random pictures I found on the Interenet -- they are all the same anyway. I got pretty good at telling Mercedes bus from a Saab bus, but the differences were so minor that the effort was really just to pass the time.A trip like this sees you moved, en masse, onto the ship, onto the bus, through the attraction, back on the bus, back on the ship. And it came complete with people moving around you keeping you orderly and guiding you where to go next.
If all of that sounds familiar to you, that's because that's pretty much how a cattle drive works, except without the boats and buses -- substitute trains. At times, one is tempted to Moooo.It's been a long time since I took a trip like this, I had kind of forgotten how it was. Upon my return, I pulled out the "trip book" from my 1991 visit to the Soviet Union, a compare and contrast thing if you will. As I was a part of an official delegationon that trip, we kept pretty meticulous records of meetings, abstracts for all papers we presented and heard, a simple daily journal, and so forth.
Seems in addition to forgetting about the cattle drive nature of things like this, I'd also forgotten that that same nature had driven myself and a couple of buddies on the '91 trip to creative heights -- we composed a song, and there in the journal entry for the last day of the trip were the lyrics, sung to the tune of "Rawhide" by Frankie Lane I give to you now -- "Busride"
Chorus 1: Rollin', rollin', rollinTrust me, after a week, it's funny
Keep those delegates rolling
Though their feet are swollen, busride
Don't try to understand then
Just push, count and command them
Keeping my interpreter by my side
Chorus 2: Wake 'em up, move 'em out, cram 'em in -- Busride
Repeat Chorus 1
Through Aeroflot, heat and swelter
We want to see the smelter
So let's all hurry up and take another busride
Repeat Chorus 2
Repeat Chorus 1
It really is a pity, here in our city
We can't read s*&^ without a guide
Repeat Chorus 2
BUSRIDE!
