An old friend at the airport, flight delays, and tricky phone maneuvers.
Cuong, a friend and also a programmer at the Learning Company, shuttled me to the airport in his car. With only one turnaround to fetch the forgotten beard trimmer power adapter, we were made it there without a hitch.
At the airport I checked in the large black duffelbag and proceeded to gate 82, where I was scheduled to board a plane to New York as my first connection of a flight to Tel Aviv. From there I hope to meet someone from Superstudio at the airport, or else rent a car and drive to Jerusalem, approximately 45 minutes away.
While waiting at the gate, I happened to meet Alisa, a friend from college. She was a teaching assistant for one of my aerospace engineering classes, and now she's working on an advanced degree at Stanford University. Alisa is going to New York to visit her folks, and then on to meet up with Chris in Colorado. The main thing I remember about Chris was the snake-skin boots he was wearing when I met him about a year ago. Alisa and Chris plan to drive back to San Francisco in Chris's pickup truck, biking and hiking along the way.
As we boarded, Alisa correctly identified theplane as a Boeing 767. After some delay while the maintenance cre replaced a fuel level transmitter on one of the fuel tanks, we took off for New York.
While passing over the Sacramento area, the clouds seemed low and grey, and much of the ground looked dark -- almost black. Perhaps it was just an illusion, but I wondered if this could have been the result of the forest fires I've been hearing about on the news.
My digital camera was slightly damaged at a friend's wedding in Miami, so I used some of my spare time on the flight to make minor structural repairs.
Upon arriving in New York, our delay in leaving San Francisco put me very close to the departure time of my next connection. I worked up a small sweat getting over to the TWA terminal, but once I arrived, I found that the Tel-Aviv flight was delayed from 9:40 to 12 midnight, which is past bedtime for some people.
While I waited, I attempted to leave a message in Israel with my flight information, but my AT&T card wasn't accepted because of a "high instance of calling card fraud in the area ", though I'm not sure if that meant Israel or New York.
During the past week, I received a junk mail offering for a new calling card, and luckily, I still had the clipping in my wallet. I called and established a new calling card account, then used the new account to dial Israel. However, upon reaching the number that I had for Kenny, Bob's voicemail answered. Apparently my phone list for Superstudio is out of date. I left a message for Kenny on Bob's voicemail, hoping that he would forward it on. I also called back to the Learning Company, and left a message with Kari Ann asking her to contact Kenny with my flight information. Kari Ann is a friend who sits right next to me at work. Hopefully someone at Superstudio will get the message with my flight info. If not I can just rent a car and find Superstudio when I get to Jerusalem.
They've offered the passengers from my flight a snack while we're waiting.
Now...I don't know whether I should go to sleep early or stay awake to adjust to the new time zone.