the Holy Blog

I am writing this from somewhere else as I am not at home right now. Well, I'm home, but not my home. I, and the family, have made the trip to Israel. I'd like to reflect on the trip thus far.

The car service showed up and we were immediately transported into the Israel experience as our driver spoke little besides Russian. Thirty minutes later and we found ourselves at scenic Newark Liberty airport. The crowd was sparse and we breeezed through a variety of checkpoints, even when a good looking security guy had to scrawl something on my passport. We made it to gate 62 and waited there until the lovely disembodied voice invited us to preboard. Since we actually boarded I fear we failed at preboarding, and will have to go back and do it again.

Our seats were economy. Economy means little. And they were. We had personalized video screens so we didn't have to share in the communal experience of ignoring what was airing; we could criticize and ignore on a more personal level. One of the screens gave constant updates as to our location, speed and other statistics so anyone who was writing a book (or a blog) could take notes and report faithfully. According to the statistics, we were running at 650 MPH and that stands for meals per hour. There were lots of those. We got a snack, then a chicken dinner, then coffee, then ices, then breakfast. Yum. For breakfast the glatt kosher 8 egg omelet was nicely offset by the low fat cream cheese. I gained three pounds on the plane. I really respect how they waiting until right after breakfast was served to hit the turbulence.

The technical info also pointed out that the temperature at 33,000 feet is -52 degrees, but I don't know if that accounts for the windchill factor. Before breakfast, the steward(ess) brought around the hot towels. That took me back to the good old days. A hot wash-n-dri in a squished seat reminded me of long car trips and handy wipes fresh from the glove compartment. Yay. While I was eating, I read the duty free catalog. I found that I can buy duty free Legos. never again will I be saddled with excessive taxes. Instead, I will make international flights so I can pay less for Legos.

Strange thing about time zones...today is my birthday, but my birthday never started. I just turned around and it had already been my birthday for 5 hours. Weird. This is why I hate time zones. CF earlier post.

I'd like to send a shout out "thank you" to the guy in the seat in front of me. he helped me confront my claustrophobia by keeping his seat in the lean-back position for the entire flight. I enjoyed not being able to breathe, and trying to focus on a video screen 3 inches from my nose. That plus the tiredness which came from the wonderful strategy of "let's not sleep the night before the flight so we can sleep through the flight" which didn't work at all has given me nausea from right to left.

Anyway, then we arrived at the airport in Israel. When we got to the front of the immigration line we were tempted to answer the question "do you have anything to declare?" with "Yes! That was a ridiculously long line." The line seemed almost like, even though the airport has been in existence for a while, and they KNOW the schedule, they are caught by surprise by the number of people who need to be checked. When we got to the curb (our bags were the last ones out) there wasn't a taxi that could fit all our bags. Strange...people must have come in before us. And we had 3 fewer bags than our allotment. But it worked out when the taxi we jammed into had a GPS which had no record of the street we needed to get to.

So, the wife has gone out to buy beans, I am still confused about what day it is, and all is right. Till tomorrow, no doubt.