A picnic "in nature"

Three of M's students (Andrei, Igor and Constantine) invited him, and any of the rest of us who were interested, to go into the country for a picnic on Sunday. The weather was still so unbelievably wonderful, that I had to accept the invitation. So, M, G, J and I embarked on a little journey with some Russians. They arrived at the AH at about 10:30am and told us that they had vodka, wine and beer, and that we needed to go to the grocery store to buy vegetables and anything else we might like to drink. Of course, they were very disappointed when we tried to purchase only non-alcoholic beverages, and managed to convince us to buy a liter of beer too. You know, just in case a car full of booze isn't enough for seven people, one of whom is 100lb, low-tolerance me. Igor and Constantine had cars, so we loaded up and headed westward out of the city, we drove about half an hour, and then turned off the road and started down an unkempt dirt track (more like a couple of ruts) through some woods-n-fields. I should mention that they were driving in typical Russian fashion (definitely white knuckle; enough to make you wish the car had seatbelts), and they continued this racecar technique as we bounced across some fields and "into nature" as the Russians say. (My mother would have been proud of them, actually. She is always off-roading in her station wagon. Bouncing along through the wilderness in the Russian car reminded me of several off-road trips I’ve taken with my mom. Hmmm. Suddenly I'm worried about how my poor Echo is faring in her care...) We drove parallel to a small river called the Koloksha for some ways before they found the "perfect spot" for our picnic: a tiny little clearing in the woods just above the shore of the Koloksha. (The Koloksha is a tributary of the Klyazma, the river upon the shores of which Vladimir sits.) This was not the most spectacular of spots by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the Koloksha was rather unremarkable, and the woods surrounding it were just, well, woods. But it was nice to be out "in nature." The Russians said people go into the countryside for the fresh air and to be able to have fun somewhere without having to worry about cops. Great. We unpacked the cars and immediately set up camp, as it were. They set up a small metal grill, unloaded some firewood, inflated a mattress, spread some blankets, set the hood of one car up as a table/bar, and unloaded the guns. Yeah, I said guns. I must admit I was a little concerned at first. Here I am out in the middle of nowhere with enough booze to kill a small family and a couple of guns. Kinda sketchy. Well, what do I know? They turned out to be BB guns. We wasted a lot of BBs on target practice over the course of our rather lengthy picnic (we didn't get back to the AH until around 6:30pm), and I must say that for some reason I am a much better shot after I have had something to drink. I also have to say that J is a great shot, whether sober or not, and she totally out-shot the rest of us. I also somehow managed to cut myself on the gun. How? I don't know. Ask the booze. Anyway, the Russians had brought some sort of Ukrainian vodka, made with peppers and lemons, which was delicious. Seriously, it was some of the best vodka I have ever tasted, although it was also very potent. We were taught the proper way to drink vodka: chase it with a bite from a sour pickle, kind of like the whole tequila followed by lime thing, russkie-style. Following the vodka, they began to cook the shashlik (essentially Russian barbecue: marinated pork or chicken cooked over a fire), and we broke into the appetizers (some incredibly delicious cheese... mmmm) and the wine. The wine was Georgian (as in eastern European Georgia, not that state north of Florida), and was very smooth and pleasant to the taste. Luckily after that we were left with cheap beer and really bad wine trying to masquerade itself as port. I prefer to drink things that are tasty. We ate several batches of scrumptious shashlik, shot a lot of BBs, and played volleyball, and some rather abhorrent version of volleyball called hot potato, in which I got smacked in the face with the ball. Lovely. Igor had brought his dog, Vesta, who was a lot of fun. I'm really not a dog person at all, but every now and then I run across a dog that I really like. This dog had a very nice personality: she didn't bark, didn't throw herself on me and knock me to the ground, and she played volleyball better than I did (not like that's saying much, really). But seriously, I had never before seen anything like the way she tried to jump up in the air and head-butt the ball. (I tried to get some pictures of this, but unfortunately the shutter always seemed to click a second too late; you’ll simply have to take my word for it.) It was a long, fun and relaxing day, "in nature" (Nina M is always encouraging me to go out "in nature;" for some reason I feel the need to put that phrase in quotes).