The crucial element of our Big Bourbonerama last weekend was my friend Oleg, who agreed to drive the six hours to Louisville while the rest of us flew. Sadly, if you're headed someplace with the specific purpose of acquiring lots of liquids in 750ml containers, you can't bring anything back by air. This is why the terrorists have already won.
Oleg is from St. Petersburg, Russia, and despite several years in the United States, he retains a rather thick accent. And after we packed his hatchback with our precious cargo and headed to the airport, the other three of us came to the swift, unanimous conclusion that we'd never see him again. He was an ingenious Putin operative who had launched his diabolical plan years ago by:
- getting a Ph.D. in astrophysics;
- earning a tenured position at U of M;
- teaching there six years to establish trust;
- suggesting a trip to the Birthplace of the Bourbonic Plague to three susceptible rubes;
- making up some crazy lie about having to present a paper at the University of Indiana, so he'd have to drive to and from anyway;
- (yada yada yada);
- driving off into the sunset with three grand worth of top-shelf booze, cackling like a Russian hyena.
After all that whistling past the graveyard, he and our 29 babies made it home safe and sound, and when he posted a picture to his Picasa account, it felt just like I was gazing through the glass in the maternity ward--except I got to take home more than one.
The final transfer occurred today, and before we carted it all off our separate ways, we took a team photo:
It's going to be fun winter.
