At long last, the final post in this blog.

I have been traveling almost constantly since leaving Kazan. We left Kazan in the early evening of June 16, and had to spend the night at Sheremet'evo airport in Moscow before flying to Paris and then on to Minneapolis. We needed a little reorganization of what went in where to keep the bags under the max weight, but we managed to do so. The flight out was not bad, although the ankle was giving me serious trouble. I did note, however, that the cane I bought ("B-Well") has a name in English, instructions in Russian, and (in Russian) "made in China" at the end.

We were fortunate that at Sheremet'evo they have what they call a "capsule hotel":  Basically, it is a series of rooms about the size of a faculty office with a bed and bathroom that you rent by the hour. Our six-hour stay cost about $50 per head, but simply being able to lie down and sleep some made the investment very worthwhile. I do not understand why U.S. airports -- especially JFK -- have not started this practice. What was even better, the capsule hotel is inside the secured area, so there is no need to clear security again! You can check Sasha and Gene's blogs for pictures of the hotel.

On the 17th, we left early in the morning for our flight to Paris. This was the beginning of a 36-hour day, during which time the sun did not set. Of course, for the long flight from Charles De Gaulle to Minneapolis, I was stuck in an interior seat. Not good at all for the ankle. The flights were, however, quite good, with little turbulence until it was time to land in Minneapolis (we did not know at the time that a major storm was in progress, and we bounced a lot on the way down once we cleared about 15,000 feet). The French crew were a good lot, and I was happy to have the chance to practice my French again. It appears that it has not deteriorated as much as as I had thought. In any case, they were perfectly happy to address me in French throughout the flight.

Clearing customs and immigration in Minneapolis was a real chore, because Gene and I were put into the slowest possible lane. On one leg, this was not at all fun. Then, once we got through, all the carts to carry your bags had been taken by those who got through immigration earlier, so we purloined a Delta baggage cart and piled all our bags on it. As we were clearing customs, a Delta employee accosted us, and basically told us that we weren't supposed to use that cart. So he pushed the cart over to the Shuttle van stop for us. Since I was walking way too slowly for his liking, he stopped and got a wheelchair for me. To be honest, we should have done that much earlier.

Three hours later, we were back in Eau Claire, and I got to sleep one night in my own bed before heading out to Florida for the wedding of two former students, Ryan McKenney and Katie Anderson. This was the second summer/spring wedding of former students of mine -- I could not get to the wedding of Dr. Jeremiah Stromich and Ashley Weber because of a conflict with the Chemistry Department Awards Banquet. The "New Yankee Workshop" sign on the lab door put there when I became a naturalized U.S. citizen may now need a new one under it: "Cupid's Cavern."

So there you have it.