(continued from Thursday, 3 May, 2007)

April 7: At the Blogger's End of Season Soiree at Clyde's all four of us meet James Mirtle of the Toronto Globe and Mail. Before we can finish shaking hands with him he asks us about "this Moscow gig . . . is this really happening?" We're stunned, as collectively we've mentioned it only to family and close friends. Then James goes on to explain his meeting with Mr. Leonsis at the Sabres' game that afternoon. We put two and two together. And we promise to keep James apprised of the developments. Mirtle, who has his own exemplary blog, sure seems interested in writing about our trip.

April 10: This fantasy trip carries one principal administrative headache for me: I'm without a passport, and I have less than 30 days 'til travel. My real job involves a good bit of interaction with Capitol Hill staffers, and recognizing the novelty of my circumstances, and vaguely aware of "pull" that can come from people in privileged places, I share my challenge with a lawyer chum in a United States Senate office. We'll call her Lucky Charm.

Expedited passports, she informs me, are back to being processed in about two weeks, so she wants me to initiate my request through the normal procedures. A couple of days later, I'll present myself at a Maryland passport office and cough up a lot of dough to expedite. I'm told there that I can follow the progress of my application on line at the State Department's web site. Still, I'm terribly nervous about placing my faith in the federal government within this constricted timeframe. Lucky Charm is excited for me, and I like having her in the know in case things with State get bogged down. She asks me to keep her informed of the progress.

April 12: The OFB comrades get out of our respective offices early and travel to the Caps' Ballston offices for a 4:00 meeting with Kurt Kehl, Mike Vogel, and Spike Parker. The first formal Moscow Meeting. The meeting agenda is basic and general -- storyboard the coverage in Moscow, and present to Mr. Leonsis a workplan, which Vogel will construct, for the owner to approve. After all, he's making an enormous investment with this gig, so he has a right to understand and approve the products we'll be delivering.

The meeting in Kurt's office is informal and cordial and chock full of nerves-calming cheerful banter. OrderedChaos and Spike are the room's twin techies, conversing much of the time in computer geek-speak about the World Championship Tournament page the Caps will devise. Vogel, seated next to me, directs a few "They're speaking Russian to me" raised-eyebrow glances my way. The geeks lose me after the words "World Championship."

We discuss travel and lodging, and Kurt reminds us that one of the team's Russian scouts, "Gleb," will be with us virtually all along, guiding us through the foreign currency and culture. Vogel chimes in about specific pieces we'll be constructing, first and foremost a tournament preview. I offer the view that any workplan for Mr. Leonsis should acknowledge that perhaps as much as a quarter of our ultimate product will arrive from unplanned and unforeseeable comings and goings and encounters in Moscow. It's good to have a guiding script of course, but we do ourselves -- and especially our readers -- a disservice, I suggest, if we fail to embrace the novelty of this gig and "allow stories to write themselves."

The meeting, which lasted nearly two hours (altogether pleasant and too fast), adjourns, and before OrderedChaos and I can convene our own strategy session at Bailey's across the street (the "meeting" being euphemism for "this is really happening and we're drinking tall drafts to celebrate it"), I ask Vogel to lead my bloggermate on a tour of the new offices as he did for me the previous Friday.