ON THE ROAD

I am sitting in the El Al waiting room in Vienna, surrounded by women with long dark curly hair, dark brown eyes, light brown skin and all talking Hebrew. I’m not sure if I am in a waiting room or the place those martyrs go to when they do something heroic on earth. In any case, I want to knock out a quick entry while I can still concentrate.

For those of you who travel often this entry is going to seem pretty naïve, but this is what I remember from my last foreign trip in 1969. I was broke in Frankfurt and wanted to borrow $50 from my Dad. I sent him a letter and mailed it by boat (I didn’t want to spend the extra money for air mail) while I waited for a reply, went to the US Embassy and one of the assistant ambassadors loaned me $5 until my Dad responded and made me promise to pay him back. Three weeks later my Dad sent a personal check for $50 which I deposited and waited another 2 weeks for it to clear. That was another week of turnaround time. I am also reminded of a book I just finished reading River of Doubt in which ex-president Teddy Roosevelt disappears in the Amazon, almost dies, discovers places nobody has ever visited and reemerges many months later to the surprise of everyone who thought he had died. My point is that historically people who travel do tend to disappear or become out of touch for long periods of time.

On the other hand, 12 hours ago I was at LAX, when I got to Vienna I discovered they had free WIFI at the airport. (What a country!) As the plane landed the natives turned on their cell phones and there was a chorus of Viennese ring tones that suddenly came on, very cool. I promptly checked my email, Maya had sent me a picture taken at LAX on her cell phone, I had about 10 emails waiting for me, and of course “checked in” to everyone who expected me to do so. Am I missing something here, but is this a giant leap for human kind or what. I know there is an argument that says all this technology is all a step backwards, but right now it seems pretty neat. I think this is pretty much the thesis in Tom Friedman’s book Flat Earth. With all this instant communications available, why do I feel like I am flying into a political situation in which the antagonists aren’t talking to each other? Curious anomaly.

One last point about the plane ride, which was my first 12 hour nonstop travel experience. I watched 4 first run movies, ate 2 nice airplane meals, noshed and then saved lots of little packages of snacks, and as a result the time went by quickly. If I had paid the extra $119 I could have had 5 more inches of leg room and who says “size doesn’t matter.” I think the extra space would have been appreciated. (And of course if Kevin Love had an extra 5 inches of height, UCLA would have won the national basketball championship.)

Ok, its time to get on the final plane to Israel, everyone (even the darked eyed Israeli girls) have been search top to bottom for weapons, lots of water and coke bottles getting pitched out. There are no questionable people on this plane that’s for sure. Oh, I just noticed a group of Christian pilgrims speaking with a British accent. They seem old, mellow and tend to be glowing a bit. I forgot that they also have a claim on the property and it makes for a weird collection of travelers. I hope we don’t end up in one of the movies scenes (ala Lord of the Flies) where we crash and have to set up a pseudo-society until help comes in 5 years or worse. I’m not sure this is the kind of group I want to be stranded with.