Something Older Than Me or How to Destroy Some of Fragile Links Between the Nations

March 20,2009 8:00 AM - 8:30PM

I woke up happy, no work. Double checked my passport, driver's license, money, etc.

We saw our Son's mother-in-law at the sock shop where we were shopping for socks(will wonders never cease, that we were shopping for socks.) She said that the part of Israel that she liked best was En Gedi. I didn't know where it was at the time, but I was interested.

We made a visit to one of our super secret business sites and enjoyed a meal at Burger Kings.

We drove over to Groome Transport. I checked in and said my goodbyes. Jake who had been weighing on my mind was the hardest to say goodbye to .

Emily was very sweet and missed me more than I expected. Karen was beautiful as always.

Naturally when you start out on something new there is trepidation, but that soon passed, I felt the most sublime peace that I have felt in years. Work was taken care of, Karen would walk the dog, I was free of responsibilities.

Choosing the back seat in the corner, I placed my coat as a pillow(which will figure importantly in the story later) and slept the sleep of the just. I would wake up every 30 or 45 minutes, watch the scenery and then go back to sleep.

It was warm so I jumped up and left my coat on the van.

We arrived at the Atlanta Airport and our driver dropped me off in the general area of the Air France depot. I spent a few minutes orienting myself. I asked if I could sit in the handicapped section which had about 50 empty seats and no takers. The employees were nice, but would not allow it.

Sat in one of the few non handicapped seats available. One great discovery that I made is if you wish to make people paranoid just sit around writing. I was waiting on Larry, so I bought a coffee and drank. I sat at a table wedged in between two families, which I will mention in more detail in a moment. One of my old bosses said very accurately,"Chuck, you are like an animal, you need room to roam." The veracity of his statement will be forthcoming.

I was wedged in at small table between 2 tables at each side containing African families, West African if my second hand knowledge from Karen's sister(a missionary to Liberia) is correct. Suddenly, my small, slow brain noticed something missing. What was it? Passport check. Wallet check. Driver's license check. Health insurance card check. Suitcase check. Bag check. Coat no check.

I jumped to my feet with a cup of coffee in my hand. Airport advice: when seated in very close proximity to 2 African, or American, European, or families of any other nationality don't jump to your feet during a negative aha moment. Coffee went everywhere, somehow through intervention of my guardian angel, I believe, landed only on their tables and not on them. I apologized to both at once and began to clean with their help. Very graciously, and with the grave dignity that seems to radiate from that culture, they said not to worry about it. I was very embarrassed and was cleaning the floor. Somewhat in the quiet, calming, tone of voice, I use with Jake when he is picking the cat up by the collar, or trying to touch my eyeball, or dumping all the clean clothes out of the basket on the floor, one of the men said as I was cleaning the floor with napkins,"They have people who do that job." I probably didn't explain it well enough, but the tone was with the quiet understanding that the individual being addressed wasn't totally tracking. I guess the acorn didn't fall far from the mighty oak.

I walked back to a rare non-handicapped chair. While returning to my perch, I notice that there were chairs around the base of the dinosaur sculpture pictured. Stretched across 2 of them was a young soldier sleeping. Ordinarily, since I wanted a seat, this would have annoyed me. My thoughts at the time were sleep on my friend. Whatever your view on the war, let's be kind to those who put themselves up front to defend us. I was reminded of the story of The Rich Young Ruler in Mark 10:21 where it said,"...and Jesus seeing him loved him." Many times on this trip I would see you people who reminded me of the this: the tough young men carrying automatic weapons under the Eiffel Tower, the young lady that we met at the restaurant with her mother in the Orsay Museum, the well behaved children at the mosque in Acko, the nice teen aged girl who said,"Shalom" to us in the old city of Jerusalem. Seeing these young people, I understood anew the meaning of the verse.

Finally, I returned still waiting on Dipstickus Maximus, also known as Larry. There he was. I should have realized that things were going downhill, but at that moment, I was just glad to see him. We both had on for our trip the t-shirts which were the theme of the trip.

We ate Chinese food which was very good. I told Larry about the coat loss. He said that we would have to buy one. My thoughts were that the coat would be nice and European, but that it would be expensive. Then the idea occurred to me that Larry should loan me his coat. Larry wasn't enthused. Then he remembered he had 2 coats, which reminded me of the verse, if you have 2 coats give one away. This is what we did. However, he chose the heavier coat which annoyed me at times. I mentioned this to him often.

The ladies at the Checkout saw our Chuck and Larry's Excellent Adventure shirts and asked us about the movie. No,no that didn't apply to us.

The personnel in security were amused as well. They had us remove our shoes, contents of our pockets and place them in a tray. Again, no we weren't like the movie. They laughed a lot.

We prepared to enter the plane which is two blog posts ahead. First in the next blog post, I will place an email from Larry which shows that he should have written this blog all along. He has a thumbnail sketch of the entire trip which I must say is excellent.

When I got home or the Shocking Story of my Daughter's Dog

Thursday, April 2, 2009

"Where do I begin...", so starts the famous line of the song about the worst love story in cinematic history, at least in my opinion. This is like listing the most disagreeable mass murderer or most annoying chick flick, but I digress.
Understand that this is not an itinerary, but a list of things that happened which we hadn't planned, ala John Lennon's famous quote in the song Beautiful Boy which goes, "Life is just what happens to you, While you're busy making other plans."
We participated in a wedding, we being used very broadly in reference to me, plus witnessing 2 others. We took roughly 6,200 photos, 200 by me and 6,000 by Larry. Basically, it was quality versus quantity. We narrowly missed a fist fight, got ourselves in a somewhat dangerous fix in a very bad neighborhood, got drenched in a seaside rainstorm, saw a double rainbow, visited some very difficult sights to see, shopped in exotic places, were scammed in front of churches, scammed on the street and down alley ways, walked almost a hundred miles, ate food at an elegant restaurant, ate food at a snack bar by a mosque, saw ancient wonders, saw more dead people than you could shake a stick at, and made a discovery that will change the ways that the world views one of its greatest art treasures, lost my coat, lost my passport and did many other things.

Well back to the narrative for Thursday, April 2, 2009.

Larry graciously drove me home.

It was so nice to stretch my legs in the car. That was one thing that returning to America, which is my home meant to me. That often wasn't possible on the Metro in France or in the Sherute in Israel, or on the airlines.

I paid for the 2 Double Cheeseburger meals at McDonalds. This meal I explained to Larry made us even, all debts were paid, we were back on a level playing field. Sounds just and fair doesn't it?

I really have to get one of those good jobs working for the government, or the press don't I?

His friend David called, Larry put him on speaker phone and we had great fun about his(Larry's) 6,000+ photos suggesting that he get a bionic eye implant so that he could take pictures every time he blinked. For some reason, Larry laughingly ended the call. I mentioned to Larry that I felt that under different circumstances, David would have been a good friend of mine.

As every time on the way to my house from his, we stopped at our secret supply source for our respective businesses.

We arrived at the house.

It was so good to hold my wife, hug my mother and daughter, to give out the presents.

Karen had a good meal of fajitas waiting for us.

Jake my seven year old son got off the bus at our house, a little later. He is autistic and can't speak, but he has his ways of letting us know what he wants. For days after I left for Paris and Israel, he would put on his shoes, hand Karen's purse to her, take her hand and lead her toward the car. He wanted her to get me. After several days of the trip, he finally gave up.

I had promised him at least a thousand times before leaving that I would be gone a long time, but I would return. It was very important for me to survive the trip for that alone.

He was glad to see me but somewhat wired.

Around 4PM Larry had to leave which in its own way was part of my readjusting to "normal" life, if you can call it that. We had been together non stop from 7PM Friday, March 20, 2009 to 8 PM Wednesday, April 2, 2009. I somewhat missed the little dipstick. One of the amazing impacts of the trip was that we didn't have any fights or get really angry at each other the entire time. Any time that I was annoyed with him on this trip or any other time, I will assure you in the interest of fairness was, is, or will be his fault. Also to make sure that this account is understood in totally logical and objective way, any time that he was annoyed, is annoyed, or will be annoyed by me is due to deep seated character flaws.

Now to "the Shocking Story of my Daughter's Dog". I'll assure you that my mother, wife, numerous bosses, pastors, social workers in prisons,halfway houses, and addiction recovery centers, and many English teachers have attempted to polish my prose and teach good grammar to me, but all to no avail, as the title of this blog post shows to you.

I must admit that my main emotion on parting from the dog was relief. I walked him every 4 hours or so every night to prevent being surprised in the morning. If I didn't walk him, I must admit what he made me believe that he was almost human. Great fun to clean up.

Well he really missed me. Hank the dog went into decline while I was gone. Above are two pictures showing the changes in him.

The before picture shows him on the couch. Lest there be any confusion, he is the one seated, I am the one laying down.

The after picture shows how he looked when we returned from the trip. Pretty harrowing don't you think?

Voracious Birds of Prey

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