Cross Winds: Adventure and Entrepreneurship in the Russian Far East
Copyright 2020 by Steven Myers
All Rights Reserved
Published by Bletchley Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information and storage retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.
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Second Edition
ISBN-13: 978-0-9881825-2-3 (hardback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-9881825-3-0 (ebook)
Book Design by DesignForBooks.com
Editing by Mikel Benton
Printed in the United States
Dedication
To the peoples of the Russian Far East, who toil in obscurity in a part of the world few have heard of, and only a lucky few have ever seen.
Contents
Acknowledgments
T his extraordinary adventure has been very challenging to write about because there was so much to share. It was only with the help and encouragement of my family, close friends, and colleagues that I was able to sift through the massive accumulation of materials to arrive at a manuscript capturing the essence of what happened.
Jennifer Harrison, my eldest of three daughters and son, is a brilliant clinical psychologist. She was fourteen when this adventure began and had no real appreciation for most of what occurred in those early years of her life, or why. In her late thirties, she read an early draft of the manuscript, and her astonishment at my story inspired me to press on.
For all of my children, now adults in their thirties and forties, this book has been a unique opportunity to share with them an extraordinary period in my life of which they previously had only been casually aware. But it was a period that impacted their lives and mine in so many unforeseen ways.
My wife, and best friend Vivian, a blossoming novelist and former management consultant, appreciated more than most what it takes to construct a story that others would want to read.
Paula Mathis, my wife during the period, managed our burgeoning family. Her devotion to our children allowed me to pursue ambitious projects.
Dr. Tom Heinsheimer, SM&As brilliant Chief Scientist for a dozen years, had the remarkable skill to sell what seemed like an absurd idea to the Russians, and then sell it to me. He worked relentlessly to make our adventure a reality.
Dr. Viktor Kerzhanovich, also known as Viktor #1 in the book, is a brilliant Russian scientist who was, from the very beginning, our indispensable man on the ground in Russia. Viktor and Tom Heinsheimer met each other, thanks to Dr. Louis Friedman, Co-founder & CEO of the Pasadena-based Planetary Society. Lou worked for years to bring together the American and Soviet Mars programs. He sponsored and participated in the trip to the Kamchatka Mars site with Tom, described in Chapter 2, which led to our adventure.
Ken Colbaugh, my Chief Operating Officer at SM&A for a decade, was the great enabler. Without his superb leadership and support at SM&A, I would not have had the discretionary time needed to pursue this extraordinary adventure.
Dennis Crosby, my Chief Operating Officer at CKC, the entrepreneurial venture that came out of our first flight, had the day-to-day responsibility for managing what he characterizes as the most difficult, most challenging, and most rewarding assignment of his career. He devoured the original manuscript and provided me with many useful ideas and details to help flesh out the key events.
Chuck DeVore was my utility infielder at SM&A for thirteen years, an Army intelligence officer, and later a three-term California state legislator. There was never a responsibility I gave him that he didnt enthusiastically embrace. His tireless energy and creativity were critical to ramping up the CKC enterprise.
Boris Gurevich, a Russian business consultant, translator, and negotiator, went with me to Moscow for the joint venture negotiations in March 1993. He was crucial in helping me make sense of the many communication issues involved in dealing with the Russian authorities.
Dr. Jerry Green, my good friend and President of the Pacific Council on International Policy, first encouraged me to write this book in the spring of 2009 over lunch, after I told him about what had occurred. He was relentlessly persuasive, and a valued contributor, reading several drafts and providing candid feedback on many contentious issues.
Rob Begland, one of my closest friends, ski buddy, attorney, and former Army officer, offered very helpful insights into the parallels between Lindberghs adventure in 1931, mine in 1992, and our shared tolerance for uncertainty.
Jerry Dauderman, another of my closest friends, favorite golf buddy, Harvard graduate, and fellow international relations enthusiast, read several drafts and provided me with the kind of feedback only he could give.
There are others, too numerous to mention, and a few who must remain anonymous, to whom I am forever grateful for their contributions to our efforts, and for their help in making this story a reality.
Why has it taken me more than 25 years to write this book? Its been much more challenging to tell my story in a digestible way than I ever imagined. I cared more about sharing with you a deeply personal experience of the heart, rather than merely providing a travel log. Ive tried to capture the essence of how I felt about what we experienced as it was happening, from the extraordinary people we met, to the incredible places we went, to the food we ate. I couldnt stop writing about it. Id put the manuscript down for a while. A few years would pass. Then Id pick it up and rewrite it yet again! Reading the biographies of my aviation heroes last yearthe Wright brothers, Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, and Charles Lindberghinspired me to finish. Enjoy!
Introduction
T his is the true story of my extraordinary experiences in the Russian Far East and Moscow shortly after the end of the Cold War. In July of 1992, just seven months after the fall of the Soviet Union, I flew an airplane and six-person crew into the Russian Far East and down the length of the Kamchatka peninsula to Petropavlovsk. Our feat was made possible only because of the remarkable cooperation of the new, post-Soviet Russian Government. At the time, I believed we were the first Americans to ever fly into this little-known and virtually inaccessible region of the globe.
Some twenty-seven years later, in the summer of 2019, I was astonished to learn that Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Ann Morrow, had flown to Kamchatka in 1931, an incredible achievement history had largely forgotten. In a terrific biography of Lindbergh by Winston Groom, their flying to Kamchatka merited only a passing observation. He noted that Anne Morrow had written a book in 1935 about their 1931 adventure called North to the Orient .
