Doh!!!!

There are days, and then there are days. In the grand scheme of things, I have my health and so do all the people I care about. But at that moment, when I realized what had happened, I felt dumber than the slime oozing from your tv set, dumber than algae, dumber than a single-cell organism. How could I lose my wallet, which was chock full of all my money, bank cards, and i.d. cards, and lose my beloved Nikon digital camera at two diferrent moments in the same night? Not only that, my eagerly anticipated journey to Mongolia was now in jeopardy.
It all started innocently enough at the Kyrgyz Republic's first ever outdoor rock festival. Ok, there's not much innocence at rock festivals in general. But, this was the first ever, or so the obnoxious MC's proclaimed in Russian from the stage between every act. This was another great moment of modernization for a country with one leg buried in an agrarian/nomadic/tradition-bound past; one leg buried in post-soviet malaise of crippling apathy, crumbling infrastructure, broken social compacts, and deep-rooted corruption from the president to the postal clerk; and one leg trying to run toward a brighter future of prosperity and the rule of law as the lonely beacon of democracy in a most undemocratic neighborhood. Wait, that's three legs. Well, yes, of course, you see Kyrgyzstan is like a three-legged horse, and despite the odds ... never mind.
Ah yes, the rock festival. It was an impressive set-up in the parking lot of Promzona, the trendy, clean and modern rock club rising from the ashes of the old industrial zone on the outskirts of town. Certainly the whole scene could have been transplanted from some middling mid-summer music fest anywhere in Europe or North America: beer garden with attentive wait-staff; professional level soundboard, monitor and P.A. system; a covered, elevated stage with dramatic view of the Ala-Too range in the background; and corporate sponsor ads on nearly every surface. The bands were all local heroes who thrashed out set after set of russified hard rock and pop, ending with a rockin set by the much-loved local Rammstein cover band I discussed earlier, "Steinmar". It was during their energetic set that I finally broke out the ol' Nikon and started snapping pics of the mosh-happy crowd and the stoic antics of the band. I believe it was sometime during this set, when a very drunk and shirtless russian kid gently pushed me aside to make room for his drunken hesher dance that my pockets were picked. Gone were my wide angle lens in one pocket and my wallet in my back pocket. But I wouldn't notice that until later.
Shortly thereafter I caught a taxi with an American acquaintance back into the city. We thought we were smart leaving early and beating the crowds to the taxi line. I thought I was smart. After arguing with the driver about prices, I told him we'd both get out on Isanova, to hell with his ridiculous fares. In my haste to leave his presence, I think I left my camera on the back seat. One block later, I noticed. I noticed, I had no camera, no wallet, no lens. Taxi gone. I am the slime. To make matters worse, I was supposed to purchase my ticket to Mongolia Monday morning so I could join Tuya for a week visiting her family. Now I had nothing. Dread, self-loathing, a desire to punch something or someone or myself, all coursed through my veins.
Mercifully, help came in time and my journey to Mongolia is secured, though my dreams of snapping gigabytes of epic of photos of that mystical land just will not happen this time. Perhaps, it was a sign to narrow my focus a bit. So rest assured, a written account of my time in the land of Genghis will paint a thousand pictures! In the meantime, have a great Fourth of July, and let's all drown our fleeting sorrows in the drama of the World Cup. I'll be up at 1am to watch Deutschland re-conquer Italy...