Fat Man/Fit Town

Our first day of hiking started out with a visit to Rosh Hanikra, on the coast right up against the border with Lebanon, or at least with the UN patrolled border zone with Lebanon. After a brief stop at the border fence (from which we saw a couple of UN vehicles exit into Israeli territory) and a short explanation of the local geology, which hopped on the cable car that took us to the grottoes of Rosh Hanikra. The grottoes are natural caves worn into the limestone cliffs, which have had some walking tunnels for visitors added. Really, spectacularly, beautiful. 

  Inside the grottoes at Rosh Hanikra

During World War 2, the British built a rail line from Egypt to Turkey to transport materiel free from sea-going attack and for the additional speed and efficiency. They built tunnels through the cliffs of Rosh Hanikra, as well as bridge between two of them (now destroyed). In one of the train tunnels (the rails are still there in the floor), there is a small theater set up to show a movie about the natural and human history of the site. The screen is mounted on the wall constructed to close the tunnel at the border with Lebanon. Huh.

Exiting Rosh Hanikra onto the beach at the southern end of the complex, we started our first, warm-up hike–5 miles down the beach to Achziv. Walking on sand in hiking boots is an excellent way to stretch the calf muscles. I enjoyed very much when we stepped off the beach onto the road. Like floating on a cloud.

Soon we arrived at the descent into the dry riverbed of Nahal Yechiam. Here is where I learned, or really was reminded, that while I am strong and able to traverse reasonably rough terrain, being blind makes me extremely slow compared to other hikers. For the rest of the week, I was definitely the guy at the back of the pack. Well, me and Eliana and the sweeper guide for most of my days of hiking, Maurice. (Also, for several of the hikes, the youngest member of the group, Sam, who volunteered early on to help with guiding me. Sam’s a mensch.) On the rocky terrain of the riverbed, I needed someone at all times to let me know where to place my hiking poles (the best thing I bought in preparation for the trip, hands down–without them, I couldn’t have done half of what I did) and, by extension, my feet. It was a physical and mental challenge (but mostly mental) for all of us. AFter 3 or 4 miles in the riverbed, we met the bus and headed back to Akko to clean up, eat, find out what the next day’s hike would be, and crash.

On Day 2, we will definitely need the water shoes. 

It turns out that hiking miles per day over rough terrain is mentally and physically exhausting. So I pretty much failed at blogging as we went on this trip in favor of collapsing into bed every night soon after dinner and evening briefings. 

The following posts are therefore slightly hazy reconstructions of what we did each day. 

We landed in Tel Aviv at 0515 Tuesday morning, just about 24 hours after we had originally planned. We breezed through border control and baggage claim, found an ATM and loaded up on shekels, bought train tickets, and were headed out of the airport on the 0635 to Akko. A couple of hours and a short taxi ride, and we were at our first hotel, the Rimonim Palm Beach in Akko. 

Too early to check in, we stored our luggage, greeted the organizers, who were setting up the registration tables, and tried to get the lay of the land. Almost immediately, we ran into Richard, one of my fellow riders from the trip in 2013. We caught up a bit, and he helped us immensely by talking us past the staff monitoring entrance to the dining room so we could get a cup of coffee from the breakfast buffet (to which we were not entitled, since we hadn’t stayed the night before). My new best friend, Richard is. A couple sitting in the dining room, noting my hiking back (Eliana had sensibly stowed hers with the rest of the luggage), brilliantly deduced that we must be fellow hikers and called us over to join them. Susan and Howard are a delightful couple from Teaneck, who became frequent meal companions and now good friends.

After fortifying with coffee, we ventured to a nearby mall to perform the first important task for our time here: obtaining cell phone service. It was a tiny bit weird that we had to pass a guard to enter the mall, but the interior felt just like an American mall of the 1980s–two-story, open so you can see the shops above or below from the other floor, clean but a little old-fashioned. It was early, so there were no crowds, and we went to the BUG electronics store to sign up with Golan Telecom. The guys there were friendly, but spoke very little English. We managed the transaction successfully despite the language barriers, and quickly had reliable, cheap (if a little slow) internate service. Thus connected to the ‘Tubes, we headed back to the hotel to check in with the trip organizers and get our room. 

We immediately started running into people I knew from the bike ride 2 years ago, which was great fun for me. Everyone was bummed that Derek couldn’t make it this time, mostly, I think, because they were looking forward to drafting off the back of a tandem again (an experience one guide last time described as “like riding behind a truck”). We had lunch with a couple of people at the Sephardic restaurant next to the hotel. I really didn’t know exactly what I was taking from the cafeteria style warming tables or what it would cost, but everything looked great, so I took a wide variety. Turned out not to be cheap–an expensive restaurant nex to a resort hotel on the beach, go figure–but everything was delicious. Anyway, it was the last meal we had to pay for until the hiking trip ended a week later, so not really a problem.

After lunch, we went back to the room to rest for an hour before the scheduled walking tour of Old Akko. Turns out, we needed a nap more than  a tour. Old Akko will have to wait until a future trip.

Before dinner, we made it down to the beach to dip our toes in the Mediterranean. Then we joined 120 other hikers, riders, volunteers, and guides for the official start of the 2015 Ramah Israel Bike Ride and Hiking Trip.

We finally made it to Israel early Tuesday morning! The journey redo was not entirely without problems. The flight scheduled for 11PM Sunday, didn’t take off until nearly 1AM. First, we couldn’t board the plane until the catering truck delivered and loaded the meals for the flight. The passengers at the gate nearly revoted, and the poor BA gate agent was brought to tears. I felt badly for her.

When pre-boarding started, we were met by the redoubtable Hugh, the Cabin Service Director, and ushered into the little pre-boarding lounge at the top of the BA jetway. He’d been very nice to us the previous night, so Eliana had written a little thank-you note to him and the rest of the crew. He seemed quite touched that someone would do this, and hurriedly wrote on our boarding passes and handed them back to Eliana. After he walked away, Eliana leaned over to me and quietly whispered “You’re welcome.” Seems that some of the business class passengers from the previous night had made other arrangements, and there were a few seats empty there, so he’d just gone ahead and given us an upgrade. BA business class is a damned fine way to travel for 8 hours. I’ve heard that first class is even swankier, but that level of luxury probably would have made my head explode. As it was, I was gob-smacked by the gap in comfort and service between what we paid for and what we got. Since this was BA, let me put it this way: my outer Labour voter was appalled by the astonishing class inequity, but my inner Tory was certain that we deserved to travel like this. Forever.

 Yes, I look a little manic. The luxury is about to give me apoplexy. 

Because of the change in schedule, our 10 hour layover in London turned into about 6.5 hours. Getting through UK Border Control and onto to the Heathrow Express went pretty quickly, so we ended up with about 3 hours in central London. Not enough time for much, but we managed to have a little dinner in Covent Garden, then walked through Trafalgar Square down to Westminster before hopping the Tube back to Paddington and there to Heathrow. 

The 4 hour flight from London to Tel Aviv in coach was a bit of a comedown, frankly. 

An adventure, someone once told me, is an experience you hated while it was happening, but makes a great dinner party story. Yeah, we had that.

Everything was going so well, at first. We got on an airport bus in Boulder that was just needing to be moved to the airport, so it made no stops, took the always-empty toll road, and got us to the airport 20 minutes before we had expected to arrive. Terrific. They say to get to the airport 3 hours before an international flight, and we’re at T-3h20m, so we’ve got plenty of padding for checking our luggage and getting through security and getting a bite to eat. Fantastic.

And DIA is practically empty. We wait in line to check luggage at the BA counter for about 30 seconds. Luggage away, we head to the usually packed TSA checkpoint. No line. Boom, we’re through.

It’s now T-2h45m, so we take the train out to Terminal C for a sit down meal at the satellite outlet of a trendy Denver restaurant that Eliana likes, even though our flight leaves from Terminal A. We have plenty of time. Dinner is pricey, but excellent.

And then the rain that’s been falling all day turns to snow. Wet, heavy, Colorado Spring snow. Uh-oh.

At T-2h, we are at the gate, and the flight is still showing on time. In fact, the 747 arrives shortly after we do. That’s good. They have plenty of time to turn it around.

Boarding is supposed to start around T-45m. The plane is a 747, so you can’t do the board-everyone-in-30-minutes gig. Thing is HUGE. We get a little hint of issues when boarding gets pushed back to T-20m because the ground crew isn’t finished cleaning up, and the flight crew hasn’t gotten on board to do security checks. Fine. We’ll be 30 minutes or an hour late. We’ve got a 10 hour layover scheduled in London. Still penty of time to go into the city and check out a few sights.

We pre-board, using my magical blind-guy cane. The crew is chipper and friendly as we board. Couldn’t be nicer. We are seated, as comfortably as possible in coach, pretty close to the time we’re supposed to push back from the gate. Running a little late, but not so bad.

We finally pull back from the gate at around T+1h, taxiing pretty slowly towards the runways, then stopping. Here’s where things start to get slightly annoying. Nobody says anything about the delay for too long. Seems obvious it’s weather, but communication is a little slow in coming. Eventually, Captain McNamara comes on the PA to tell us that only two runways are available due to the weather. Because we are are a heavy 747, we can only use the longer one. The longer one is being plowed. We need to be deiced. We must take off almost immediately after deicing, so we can’t start the process until the plowing is done. There are only four deicing stations, a lot of traffic, and we are so big we need two of the four stations (adjacent ones, obviously). Sigh.

At T+2h, we finally get our slot for deicing. Initially, the co-pilot tells us it will take 25-30 minutes. Fine. Starting to look like we may miss our afternoon/evening in London, but there’s still plenty of time to make the connection to Tel Aviv. London was always a bonus part of the trip, anyway. More than an hour later, we are told the good news that “the first phase of deicing is done.” Huh? We are so big, and there was so much snow and ice already on the plane, that it took that long to just get the plane ice-free enough to apply the antifreeze coating that keeps the ice off for enough time to take off. We are told this will take 15-20 minutes, but it’s more like 30. T+3h45m.

[Oh, did I mention that during the deicing, the engines need to be turned off? No air conditioning. So what? It’s 29 degrees Fahrenheit and dark outside. We’d need heat, right? Did it ever occur to you (it hadn’t to me) that the passenger compartment of an airplane is basically constructed like a Thermos bottle? Planes fly in air that’s 50 below. They’re insulated. And there are several hundred people sealed in the bottle. I can hear the auxiliary motor that keeps the lights on and minimal air circulation, but the temperature is climbing. Fast. That just added to the usual comfort of modern air travel.]

Deicing complete, we move towards the runway. Slowly. This is bad. The plane is supposed to go straight from deicing to take off. So the co-pilot, then the pilot, come to check the wings. Icicles. Damn. Back to the deicing pad, this time via a long route down the runway and back along the few taxiways that have been cleared of snow. We are warned that we are now running into crew work hour constraints, and BA Operations are being consulted. The captain also mentions that we have now exceeded the U.S. limit on holding passengers in a plane on the ground. He says that any passenger may request to be let off the plane. If that happens, we will have to return to the gate and that will definitely put the crew over time, thus canceling the flight. He was perfectly cheerful about it, but his implication was clear: If you ask for this, your fellow passengers will do something awful to you, and good luck finding witnesses for the prosecution.

We’re now at T+5h, and it’s over. They can’t find an intermediate airport to stop for a fresh crew, we don’t really have enough fuel for that anyway, and it’s 2 in the morning. Back to the gate we go, when the cabin crew asks if there’s a medical doctor on board. Just what you want to hear. Then we need to stay in our seats for a few extra minutes while the paramedics come onboard to take care of the passenger. Turns out he’s basically ok–a little bit of exhaustion and dehydration made him feel badly, but he got off the plane on his own steam.

The BA ground staff worked hard to communicate with everyone about rebooking and options. The crew was extremely solicitous and kind to us. But at 3AM, DIA is basically shut down. There were no hotels available, no ground transportation, and no food. Also no baggage handlers, so our bags had to stay on the plane for the night. According to the staff and the BA website, our flight would now depart at 5PM Sunday, a mere 20 hours late.

We are lucky to live relatively nearby, but we still had to wait until 4:30AM for a bus back to Boulder. We took care when we finally arrived home not to frighten Bonnie and Daniel, who’d been asleep before most of the delays happened. I crashed for 4 hours and woke up to texts and email from BA that our flight would now leave at 11PM, 26 hours after we meant to leave. We’ll get to Israel a day later than planned, but still in time for the Ramah Trip.

See you from Israel on Tuesday, kein eina hara.

I’m once again off to Israel in support of the special needs programs of Camp Ramah. Unfortunately, Derek couldn’t make it this trip. Happily, I get to hike the north of the country with my wonderful daughter, Eliana. For some reason, I couldn’t convince her to captain me on a tandem bike going up and down the Golan Heights. Imagine that.

We leave tonight and will be landing in Israel on Monday morning, local time. In between, we have a long enough layover in London to head into the city for a few hours. That’s the plan, anyway.

We’ve raised over $4300 to date, but we’d love to exceed our goal. It’s not too late to donate.