Designed and engineered in Seattle, in 1996 I was on site during the construction of a 12 Mw 60 HZ Natural Gas Power Plant serving the Kubaka Gold Mine.
Materials and personnel were delivered via an ice road (available only in February) from the coastal city of Magadan or by a 4 ½ hour Russian military helicopter ride (my form of transportation). The work was hard, the countryside amazing and despite the language discrepancy, the people I worked with were friendly and diverse, with their own unique histories and individual family stories of growing up in Russia.
The cultural differences to this guy who was raised in 1960’s West LA were great but my apprehensions were eased by their openness, warmth and compassion shown to a stranger from the enigmatic USA.