Bike in the USSR

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 Scott Smoot in Moscow, virtually

I visited Moscow in June 1977 on tour with the Westminster Ensemble, directed by Frank Boggs. My Kodak pocket camera took the photo of Red Square then. My Android took the selfie this morning. I thought I'd boldly declare my support for Ukraine with my new bike jersey, though I also thought to keep my sunglasses on so Putin won't be able to recognize me. Don't want Novichok in my Gatorade.

The distance to Moscow from Minsk is 444 miles, the distance I've traveled on bike trails around Atlanta since May 2. I post a photo from each place I virtually visit along with the story of my connection to that place. (To see stops from the whole world tour, use the arrows under the headline.)

I look back with regret on how we snickered at the Russians for accepting Communism's mindless bureacracy and petty tyranny. In private, we ridiculed a winter fashion show in midsummer; plumbing fixtures unconnected to any source of water; signatures required from three functionaries in different corners of a store to check out with one item; a museum of science and atheism squatting in a beautiful church; a sediment of boiled grey rhubarb in a drink that every restaurant served us; teens mobbing us after our show who dispersed at the approach of men in suits who corraled us upstairs for "open dialogue" with "young people" in their 30s. Finding fault was our teenage version of patriotism; but these people were our hosts.

I cringe thinking about a lot of the stuff I thought and did back then. At seventeen, I thought I knew pretty much everything I needed to know about the things that mattered to me, and I had hardly an inkling of things that didn't -- such as American civics, other cultures, history after World War I, and current events.

About one thing, I was prescient. After rehearsals, our director Frank Boggs sometimes joined his teenaged cohort in a circle for sharing thoughts and feelings. One time I said how deeply grateful I was for the friendships I had developed with classmates and especially everyone in the Ensemble, but I wondered if adults experience friendships like that. Frank said, "You'll still have friends, but the intensity won't be the same."

When we returned to Atlanta from our tour, I burst into tears. This, I told Mom, was the end of something. "It'll never be the same again." I was right.

Miles YTD 1707 miles || 2nd World Tour Total 15,242 miles since June 2020 || Next Stop: Kiev

[Our Ensemble also toured Poland. See my virtual bike trip to Warsaw with a link to more about Frank Boggs.]

←← | ← || → Use the arrows to follow the entire tour from the start.