Spring is heliboarding season in Kamchatka. I had been warned of this by Dasha when Harold and I first sat down with her at a KFC in Dalian and discussed a possible February trip. Regardless, even before hearing details and seeing photographs over fried chicken and black tea, my mind was already made up.

Unlike players of Risk, I had actually never heard of the Kamchatka Peninsula by name when I first met Dasha at an apartment party near the D.U.T. campus. When she explained its location, I convinced myself I could find it in my mental atlas. It’s that bit dangling off the Bering Peninsula, north of that island that looks like it should be part of Japan but is actually Russian and full of oil? Right?

She said she they had big volcanoes covered in snow and helicopters to drop you atop them.

Awesome.

What a cool sounding place, I thought, with no real idea that I might actually think of going there. Some days later – discussing I don’t remember quite what with Harold – I mentioned “this girl that I met who’s from this place…”

“Kamchatka? I’ve always wanted to go to Kamchatka!” His eyes lit up, and he blamed a National Geographic article with “the most stunning photographs of volcanoes and bubbling pools of sulfuric water…”

I felt a little out of the loop, liking to fashion myself a knower of exotic awesome places as I do. So back in my apartment that evening, I fired up my SSH tunnel through the Great Firewall, and asked my trusted advisors Wikipedia and Google Images what I was missing. They both told me I might as well just go.

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When I first decided to move to China after Korea, I thought that the only reasonable way to get there would be the boat from Sokcho to Vladivostok, and then overland from there. But when I decided to attend D.U.T., whose fall semester started on September first, a whole one day after my contract with EPIK would end, it seemed such a route might feel a smidge rushed.

Lucky timing indeed, for little did I know that by attending D.U.T. first and visiting Russia thereafter I would met loads of Far-Eastern Russians who are ready to bust backflips to welcome you should you accept their many invitations to visit their strange land.

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I don’t think Dasha really expected us to come, but when we surprised her with concrete plans, she sprung into action. Finding out that hotels based out at about $100 per night, she somehow found a friend who was incredibly willing to take in some random, stinky foreign guys she had never met before.

Julia is a 22 year-old super-girl. She spends long days working in public relations for the Kamchatka government, her nights climbing rockwalls like some kind of sticky-handed spider monkey, and her weekends snowboardling like she was born with a snowboard pre-attached. After meeting Julia and her not at all sarcastic friend Natashka at the airport, we dropped off our stuff and headed out to “Good Food”, Petropavlosk’s answer to TGI Fridays, with the same red stripes and the same kitschy interior, but no English on the menu the name of the restaurant aside, and tastier food. There we met Dasha and many other new friends with whom we later went to “Sports Bar.” This club, with a $2 cover, had three large floors: night club on the frist, billiards on the second, and some kind of rock’n'roll-themed bar on the third. Russian billiards involves a table that is too big, pockets too narrow, and balls as well too big and all the same color of white. It seemed better to stick to some ol’ fashioned 8-Ball. I still embarassed myself appropriately with my lack of skill.

Reportedly a small Wednesday crowd, the dance floor downstairs started filling up after midnight. I bought a bottle of Vodka to share with my new friends, thinking I might beat them to it.

This, however, set off a rather cataclysmic domino effect of bottle buying. Somewhere into the group’s third bottle of Parliament I was told that Sports Bar is a favorite for fight starters, and I got my hopes up I might be able to witness – from a safe distance – a good Russian bar fight. Unfortunately I missed that night’s fight, which took place outside, and even more unfortunately saw the aftermath. I hope an ambulance came soon, but at 4:00 a.m. alreadly there was no need to stick around and watch that poor soul bleed.

There was to be no snowboarding the next day.