To us, a field party at the end of the season has arrived for some cases the Deputy head of the expedition. The next day was a day off, and he invited me to go hunting partridges.
The Deputy was tall, thin, fifty-year-old handsome man with long like the crane legs. Besides not Smoking. I was almost thirty, not tall, chubby, if not overweight, and Smoking at school. That is the complete opposite.
Well, he asked me heat. Before you know it, the Deputy is already on the pass, and I still have half the slope is not defeated. In the mountains I used to go, and partridges were hunted, but that man almost twice your age, so famously “taking the altitude”, I was just amazed. The chukars we successfully shoot the Deputy even one Kosach was shot, and the next day, satisfied, left for the city, and I first wondered about the dangers of Smoking. Say – there would be no happiness, Yes the misfortune has helped. And so it happened.
The onset of winter sent me into a stationary expedition, in the middle of the desert Betpak-Dala. Sent for a month, and to be there for operational needs had six months, the trip was designed as a temporary transfer. Clay desert at the time of the spring thaw becomes absolutely impassable for one to two weeks, but the spring thaw was delayed longer than usual, and the car did not pass, and airfield “limp”, the aircraft could not make a landing. The store ran out of food, alcoholic drinks and tobacco, and in the dining room offered only one dish – fried eggs from two eggs, served with pasta, the third tea, soon even without sugar. Then we’re out of eggs. Boiled pasta for Breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the portion less value. From the staff, especially the family, employees of the expedition food supplies were available, and the problem did not concern them.
In those days in the USSR, spring hunting was closed throughout. Bathed in spring water adjacent takyr stopped occasionally migrant ducks, the temptation is to get hold of a duck I had very large, despite the ban, and although the gun was with me, had and cartridges, but without the stuffed animals and mancow in a completely open steppe hunting became impossible. Happened just as the saying goes – seeing eye, Yes tooth itching.
Almost a week I was forced to and did not smoke. Their inventory I didn’t have, and constantly “shoot” indecent. Then the soil dried, flew the plane with the food, came the machine, and the cigarettes. After the first puff, it seemed to me a nasty, the decision came: the cigarette smoke is gone…
Do not smoke already for almost forty years.
