Part one: 37 hours with only an hour of sleep Anxiety and excitement were coursing through my veins as I woke up on Tuesday, September 4 in lieu of my pending departure for MoKS, an artist residency program located in the southeast countryside of Estonia. For those who had not heard about this program, allow a minor detour from the pending travelogue. MoKS is a relatively young program which began back in 2002 providing invited artists a studio and accommodations for the month. How each artist would choose to use the space and their time here is entirely up to them... and over the next month, I supposed I'll be figuring out how I'll be using it as I go. But back to the storyline so to speak... There were plenty of fears about everything that could go wrong with international travel (lost baggage, missed connecting flights, my stubborn incapacity to grasp foreign languages, all of the odd bits of electronics for the residency that could raise the alarm for a pesky security inspector or customs agent.), and I can assuage you that I did in fact make it to Estonia and onto Mooste (the tiny village which is home to MoKS) safely with all of my belongings. And yes, there were plenty of things to look forward to: a new culture with foods, sounds, and people peculiar to its time and place; and of course, the opportunity to dedicate myself into particular art projects in an entirely new place. I commented to Jeanne the pending departure was much like going to summer camp; and as Mom will testify to, I wasn't always a willing participant in the excursions to summer camp (e.g. Camp Boxwell, 1986). Jeanne and I got up slowly at 4:00 on that Tuesday, after the alarm had woken us up with broadcasts of public radio programs we never knew existed; and bravely, we headed to the airport without the usual jet-stream of coffee required to jump start both of our bodies. At the airport, we said our good-byes with me quite sad and torn to not have the company of my better half for the rest of the month. Nothing particularly eventful occurred between the first leg of the trip which took me from SFO to JFK; but the arrival into JFK proved to be something of an adventure... I could imagine JFK would be like any other airport if you were familiar with it; but the complex is so huge and disconnected, that the NY Port Authority (I'm assuming they're behind this) don't even bother to post all of the incoming / outbound flights for anybody who needs to make a connection between two airlines. So for me having to get from the Delta Terminal to the American Terminal was something of a trial of patience and constant inquiry. Fortunately, the first few security guards and ticketing agents who looked I asked as to where I needed to go was did instruct me on the correct terminal, but ALL of them were absolutely wrong about me having to re-screen through security (which given the three metal bangles on my wrist and, if the metal detectors are set high, the staples in my belly from gall-bladder surgery cause security screening to take much longer than everybody else). I've learned from years of post-9/11 travel that I should do what I can to only go through security once, and only once... Well, JFK wants no part of that. After making my way to the correct terminal, I found the Finnair / American ticket counter only to find their check-in computing system down. Fortunately, I had a lengthy lay-over at JFK -- which, I've now learned, is a far from an episode for boredom but a necessity to manage the lengthy lines I constantly found myself within. But eventually, the computers came online and all of increasingly nervous passengers of Finnair Flight 6 to Helsinki did make the flight. I had planned on taking a sleeping pill shortly after takeoff from JFK in order to knock myself out for the seven hour flight to Helsinki; and the plan was slightly derailed by a couple of factors. First of all, there was the huge Polish man who was seated next to me. Huge in the lumberjack, longshoreman, steelworker, "I can rip a large phone book in half with my bare hands" manner of body type. The seats for modern day air travel were certainly not designed for people like him in mind. That said, he stoically sat in the seat without the slightest protest. Throughout the duration of the flight, Finnair showed two movies... I tried to sleep through these but with the flashes of comic-book action and mad-cap awkward comedy (the movies don't need to be named, btw), I found myself awakened throughout the flight and constantly aware of the leaden presence seated next to me. So my attempts to get some sleep amounted to just an hour or so... For all of my complaints about the quality of JFK as an airport, I would heap praise upon Helsinki's airport. No hassles of getting from one flight to another, a much quicker screening process (which, Jeanne will be happy to know, doesn't require one to remove one's shoes), a very nicely designed set of public spaces (go figure, smart Scandinavian design found in a Scandinavian country!), and surprisingly good coffee. The ensuing flight from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estonia was a quick 30 minutes across the Baltic Sea. The weather was clear and the sun raking elegantly against the waves below. Sadly, the camera was packed in the overhead bin. Sorry no photos of that for you! So after 18 hours in the air traffic system, I've finally arrived in Estonia at 11:00 AM Wednesday morning; and I was quite relieved to meet John Grznich at the airport. John's one of the directors of MoKS, and successfully got me and my bags (which also made it, much to my amazement) onto the bus which took us southeast to Tartu, the major university town of Estonia. John had mentioned that the road from Tallinn to Tartu is the major highway through Estonia; and even though the traffic has swelled in recent years, this stretch of asphalt seemed more like a moderately traveled / well-maintained county road than an interstate mega-highway. The landscape was a combination of farms and forests, with trees that looked vaguely familiar and birds slightly less so. While I didn't get much time in Tallinn at all, John and I did spend the rest of the afternoon in Tartu which is best known as the town for the major university of Estonia. At the moment, I can't really comment much on the nature of Tartu... but I do plan on venturing into the city a few times while I'm here. That said, lunch was found at a buffet consisting of meats in sauces and noodle salads, all of which were comforting if not thrilling cuisine. Slowly throughout the afternoon, John and I collected another 4 people who were headed back to Mooste. Amidst the motley, was another American sound artist named Patrick McGinley, who I've finally had the pleasure of meeting after years of correspondence through email, and three Estonians -- Tomas, Marie, and Evelyn. In the midst of gather all of these people, we also got all of the fixings for dinner, which included fresh latikas (which may or may not be the same fish as perch), blood sausage, several bottles of wine, a few more bottles of beer, and potatoes. By the time we all arrived at Mooste, which is about 25 miles east of Tartu, twilight had set upon Estonia; and I began to realize that over the past 29 hours I had barely slept at all. Soon after we all arrived and dinner preparations were underway, Camilla Hannan and Van Sowerwine had returned to MoKS. They were the resident artists before I got here, and I had the pleasure of getting to know Camilla earlier this year when she came to San Francisco for an event that 23five was hosting. Needless to say, it was very nice to see her again and to somewhat catch up on how she was doing. Dinner took a while to prepare as the fish we got was really large and took more than usual to cook all the way through. Needless to say, the welcome feast was tremendous, and Camilla pointed out that I will probably not eat this well again whilst in Mooste. Night time fell and all of us indulged in the Estonian tradition of a late night / slightly drunk sauna... by the time, I actually crawled into bed... something like 37 hours had gone since I had really slept, and I hit the bed like a rock.