My most epic trip

<p>My girlfriend and fellow photographer have spent more than a decade also doing scientific research having to do with lasers and optics.  I will admit I don't even know which end of the laser to look in!<br>

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This research has taken us to national and international conferences (Barcelona twice, Paris for fun too many times to remember, Toulouse a few days after 9/11 - that was fairly surreal - Crete, Gran Canafria).  We have often given invited addresses.  In 2005 we went to Moscow and on to Tomsk, 1000 miles east of Moscow.  But last summer was "the epic".  We were invited to fly to Krasnoyark, 2000 miles east of Moscow and on the river Yenesei, one of the longest in the world with headwaters in Mongolia, it flows in the Arctic, or Ice Ocean as the Russians call it.  We boarded a ship (not anything like Carnival!) and sailed down river (north) as far a Vorogovo, at 61 deg N.  Even at the end of June it was too dangerous to go farther north because of ice flowing in from tributaries.<br>

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OK, at 8:30 one morning I gave a 30 minute talk to about 100 scientists as we sailed.  That was truly surreal!<br>

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The Yenesei is considered to be the geographic center of Siberia.  Vorogovo (City of Enemies) was an exile village and when we got off the boat the chair of the meeting joked "Don't miss the boat!  Remember, we have your passports!"<br>

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Krasnoyarsk is on the Trans Siberian Railroad and was a closed city until about two decades ago, as was Tomsk. which they call their "Los Alamos".<br>

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