Ballot Journey

New Mexico sent my absentee ballot so that it arrived in Ukraine exactly one week before the election. Mail back to New Mexico takes at least two weeks, so I needed to get it to Kyiv where the wonderful folks at the PC office would DHL it for me(I love inventing new verbs). The only problem was how to get it to the office there, not that Ukrainian mail is extremely slow (2-3 days to cross the country) but anything going into the PC office has to pass through security, the same security that embassy mail goes through. Anthrax sniffing, bomb testing, paper cut proofing… That normally takes a week. Luckily, my friend Curtis was headed that direction the day after I received my ballot. Unfortunately he lives 3.5 hours away. How to solve this problem? But of course had the ballot to the driver of the bus that goes through his town with $2. He told me he would be there at 17.30 and for my friend to meet the bus then. I called Curtis and he graciously agreed, the bus was on time to the minute, and later that evening Curtis carried the ballot with his own hands through the metal detector into the office in Kyiv. I hope they counted it after such a journey.