Bizarro Weekend Pt. 1

On Friday I went over to a friend's place for a Maslenitsa party ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslenitsa ). At the end of the evening my friend Grisha and I headed back to the metro before it closed at midnight. It was getting late, so we decided to we needed to run to the metro before it closed. We arrived at 11:59 only to find the doors locked. This was a problem. We were both about as far away as you can get from our apartments, in a completely different part of the city, with no way to get home (except hitchin' a ride). We went into the metro station through the exit doors and found 3-5 drunks had done the same thing. They were shouting at the ladies working there to let them through the gates so they could catch the last train. The ladies gave as good as they got and hurled abuse back at them. My friend Grisha tried the tactful route: "Excuse me, maam. Is it possible for me and my friend to go through? After all, we can see the train is still standing there." But the ladies, evidently hardened by the abuse from the drunks, shot him down. 

So, up the stairs came a man trying to exit the station. "Excuse me, sir," Grisha said, "Could you stand over there so the gates will open and me and my friend can go through?"

"Oh no," He smiled, "That's against the rules. I'll be disciplined if I do!"

While we stood there pondering what to do next, another man came up and exited the metro. With the gates still open, Grisha, quick as a flash, ran through. He then looked at me with a sort of strained smile and urgently motioned me to come through as well. One of the drunks noticed this also and lurched through. After a moment of indecision, I ran through the gates just before they closed. One of the ladies working came steaming at us and reached out to try and grab me and the drunk guy. I deftly dodged the lady (the drunk guy didn't dodge quite as deftly, but just as effectively), ran down the stairs with her still shouting at us, lost her in the crowd and hopped on to the last train with Grisha. As the train stood there at the platform I wondered if she was going to find a policeman and scour the train for us. While I was wondering about this, I noticed two or three more people jumped on to the train with a naughty/elated smile similar to the one I had. The train left with Grisha and me on it. 

The problem was, however, that we both missed our trains that connected this metro line with ours. Grisha couldn't even get close to his part of the city, so we decided that he would come and spend the night at my place. We spent most of the ride figuring out how to do this and keeping an eye on the two drunk guys across the aisle from us, one of whom was desperately trying to keep himself from vomiting. Thankfully, were able to get off of the metro without being vomited on. We were as close as we could get to my apartment, and we started walking. And walking. And walking. Fortunately, it was a nice night (maybe 34 degrees F, and, miracle of miracles, not raining) and it wasn't too bad. We arrived in the middle of the night back at my place and promptly went to sleep.

I had to wake up early, though, because the school was hosting a basketball tournament. So, after bidding Grisha adieu, I headed off to a day of basketball, which brings me to another story about this weekend, but in the interest of keeping this post at a reasonable length (and getting to bed at  decent time; and due to the pain radiating from a possibly impacted wisdom tooth), I'll save that for later.