Plane trip to Israel

Israel plane trip
June 26, 2007

Oh joy. Happy, happy, joy, joy. I get to go to the airport and be degraded so that I can travel to a country I don’t want to visit. I guarantee that when they start the full cavity searches I will stay home. I don’t care where Dianne wants to go.

At least I feel safe flying on El Al. You are quizzed before you get to the counter. You are quizzed at the counter. You cannot send you bag ahead and duck out of the airport; you have to stay with your suitcase while they screen it. You can see the guards posted all over the place with machine guns. Each step of the way you or your bag gets another color dot confirming the check in process. You are checked before you get on the bus to go to the airplane. You can see 2 - 3 security personnel on the bus with you. You go through checkpoint after checkpoint before you get on the plane. I can’t see a terrorist getting this far without sweating blood. Maybe that’s why El Al has the fewest problems of any airliner. And I hear it is even harder to board in Israel. When I find out, I will write about that too.

It was strange to get on the plane and watch many of the passengers pick up an Israeli newspaper written in Hebrew as they boarded. There were lots of folks with beanies, beards and tassels; children with little curly things by their ears; women dressed so frumpy you could cry; and I get to travel with them all. Here I was complaining about being with a bunch of religious people, and I know God has a sense of humor; I get seated next to a Rabbi. His name is Jacob Benzaquen from Congregation Temple Emanu-El in Reno, Nevada. Thank goodness he was not talkative. That’s all I needed was a 14 hour plane trip with someone trying to tell me how I need to be more Jewish, or go to temple, or donate a kidney to a synagogue or something. Although he said his congregation was conservative, he looked normal. Oh, I was thinking of the orthodox. They are the ones who say I am not even Jewish because I don’t do religion their way.

As I write this, we have been in the air for five hours, and we only have nine more hours before I get out of this flying metal tube with the seatback in front of me resting on my nose. Dianne said I look like a chipmunk trying to type this, and she’s right. Oh joy.