RANSVESTIA

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areas of

Finally the plane was ready and we took off for Yerevan, the capitol of Soviet Armenia. We flew over the high snow-covered tops of the Caucasus Mountains and they were a sight to behold. It is no wonder that in ancient times they provided a barrier pretty much like the Alps to movement from one side to the other. It was pretty stormy most of the way and the cloud effects were fantastic. As we came in for a landing at Yerevan, I could feel us hitting "bumps" down-drafts or turbulance - when we were only a couple of hundred feet up. Being a sailplane pilot, I said to myself, "This is going to be a rough one," and in preparation I cinched up my seat belt another notch and braced my arm against the window molding because on Russian planes the seats fold forward and therefore don't give any support. I was right it was rough. We hit on one wheel which slowed down that side a bit and the plane veered toward that side as the pilot corrected it which put the other wheel down and made us veer the other way. He hit the brakes hard as soon as he could get the plane straightened out and from the galley which was in the rear of the plane all the remains of the dinner trays came sluicing down the aisles along with hundreds of cellophane bags of knives, forks and spoons. The side veering had slid them off into the aisle and the sudden slowing slid them all the way up the aisle. It was something of a mess which we all had to pitch in and clean up before we could get out into the aisles for debarkation. As I got to the door I could realize what the pilot was up against because there was a real dinger of a gusty head- wind that blew peoples' hats off. So I couldn't blame him for the messy landing.

We came to Yerevan because we were to join the tour group here. We finally got through a very delayed customs and got to the hotel about 11 p.m. which was too late to make contact with our tour leader but that we did the next morning and met the other 24 members of the tour, all but six of whom were females. They had had 12 days together in Turkey already so they pretty well knew each other but we had to start learning names and since there were two Dorothys and three Barbaras, it was slightly confusing.

I won't bother you with the details of all the cities we saw but will stick to the highlights. We spent two days in Yerevan and then by bus to Tiflis, the capitol of Georgia where Stalin came from. Then a flight to Baku on the Caspian. This place really has oil wells. They are not only all over the land but all over the sea, too. There are long causeways going out five miles or more into the sea with dozens and dozens of drill heads along them. After a day's sight-seeing there we