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Tel Aviv, Thursday, 1995-10-26 20:00 local (Z+2)
I'm sitting in the business class lounge of El Al at the Tel Aviv airport waiting for them to announce their 20:00 flight to Paris—yes, it's running late. I was due to deadhead out of here early tomorrow morning back to JFK. However, crew scheduling got to me earlier in the day and started changing things. The current plan is to get to Paris and then operate to Kuwait tomorrow evening. Who knows whether it will really happen. They told me there was a prepaid ticket waiting at the El Al ticket counter for me. That wasn't true. Once again, after calling them (thank goodness for AT&T's USADirect) and thus uncovering their mass confusion, I was instructed to buy a ticket out of my own pocket to get to Paris. They will, of course, reimburse me. It's at times like this I wonder how this airline ever manages to survive. So, $855 on the old Visa card and I'm off to Paris.
The flight here from JFK was mildly interesting in a negative sort of way. All three of us were extremely tired, the captain doubly so. He had arrived from Tel Aviv the morning of the day in which we left. He didn't check for a possible schedule change and immediately jumpseated to his home in Columbus. He happened to glance at the disposition they gave him when he got to Columbus and noticed to his dismay that they had changed it, that he was scheduled to return to Tel Aviv that night. So, he went back to the very same airplane, same crew, with which he had come to Columbus and got a ride back to New York. On the way here to Tel Aviv, he fell asleep in the seat several times. I just let him sleep.
I and the flight engineer were tired simply because neither of us had been able to sleep during the day. He slept part of the way (typical for flight engineers regardless of whether they're tired or not—there's not much for them to do during the enroute portion). There were a number of times I was the only person awake on the flight deck.
To the best of my remembrance, I never fell asleep in either the captain seat or the f.o. seat. Not because I didn't want to, but because I simply can't sleep sitting up. I have to be laying down. If I'm really tired, I don't sleep, I just feel increasingly terrible.
The interesting part for me came during the approach and landing (it was my leg). I had been a bit constipated for the past couple of days, and it was at that moment in time my body decided to make up for lost time. In spite of the “distraction”, it was a good approach and a smooth landing. As soon as the parking brake was set I was out of the seat headed for the toilet. When I came out of the toilet, the passage way to the cockpit was blocked by passengers. Tower Air has an open cockpit policy when on the ground, and a lot of people come up to take a look. Two of the passengers waiting for their look were talking, remarking on the smoothness of the landing. I LOVE that—when I'm the one responsible for it, of course. I always want to walk up to them and ask them for a note of testimony, to be saved and brought forth in my defense when I next crunch it on.
Part of the smoothness of the landing was due to my carrying some extra speed down final—I needed to get that airplane on the ground and get out of that seat.
Almost forgot, Tower Air had a small accident last Sunday in Miami. One of the freighters was on the take off roll when they blew an engine. The engine truly did blow, came apart, shrapnel caught the wing leading edge, and a fire broke out that for a short while was uncontained. It closed one of the Miami runways for three and one half hours. The failure came just before V1. That's pronounced “vee one” and is the rejection speed. If you loose an engine or have another serious problem before V1, you abort the take off. If the problem occurs after V1, you continue the takeoff. Why continue. Because after V1 you don't have enough runway left to stop in theory. Almost all serious large-jet take off accidents have occurred because the crews attempted to abort when they should have continued the takeoff, and there's typically significant loss of life. Anyway, these guys did a good job and got the airplane stopped.
A few observations on Israel as I continue my education by observation. We say sabbath, they say sabbat—or something like that. Anyway, the Sheraton hotel has a sabbat elevator. It seems that during the sabbat, an orthodox Jew is now allowed to touch anything electrically powered. Don't ask me why, I don't know. I suspect though that it has something to do with the fact that electricity does work, and work is prohibited during sabbat. Anyway, how does an orthodox Jew use an electrically powered elevator when he can't touch the damn thing—at least the controls. Easy, the elevator is automatic, it stops at all floors without you having to push the buttons.
My room also had a sabbath clock. It actually said sabbath rather than sabbat. I guess the two terms are interchangeable. What made it sabbath clock. I don't know, couldn't figure it out, and forgot to ask.
This next is a little R rated. Last night I ran about 5 miles from the hotel to Old Jaffa along the waterfront. On the way down I stayed on the rather spacious and nicely done sidewalk area. On the way back I elected to walk along the surf line and observed a rather practical solution to a problem unique to a country in a constant stage of siege. If you're a young couple in Israel you can't go out in the boonies and park to neck (or whatever), it's simply not safe. The beach however is secure and relatively well lit all night, and the city of Tel Aviv stocks the beaches with plastic chairs and plastic chaise lounges. It is, in fact, famous for this and for the fact that people don't steal them. So the kids (and some that are a little past being kids) sit on the chairs facing the water. When things get a little hot and heavy, the gal faces the guy and straddles him. They have to keep their clothes on, but it's pretty obvious what's happening when the gal is bouncing up and down and the guy has his head buried under her pulled up blouse—this all while late night joggers (too hot to run in the day) routinely run by. End of R rated portion.
Ah, yes, a bit of contemporary history. You've all heard that the U.S. Congress has voted to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Last night while I was running I noticed a building I was passing had huge sandbags around it, concrete barriers, big high wall, etc. You guessed it, it was the U.S. embassy.
The U.S. embassy was finally moved to Jerusalem in May 2018, over 22 years after this jopurnal post. In my view, doing so was a bad idea in 1995 and doing it in 2018 was still a bad idea.
I checked into what it was going to cost to rent a car here. C.J. and I are planning to drive around the country at some point. The interesting thing is that the car rental costs are all listed in U.S. dollars. When I bought my ticket on this flight, the transaction was conducted in U.S. dollars. So, the dollar is very important here. In many ways, walking around Tel Aviv is like walking around Miami Beach. It's actually a very comfortable city for Americans.
In both Miami and Tel Aviv, one of my favorite places was the local nude beach. In Miami it was North Beach at Haulover State Park. In Tel Aviv it was the northern part of Tel Baruch Beach near Dov Hoz Airport.
Bye for now...Terry
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