Driving and more driving

Yesterday Ronnie and I drove up to Afula. I thought we'd leave around noon. At 11am, when we finally finished laundry and walked out to find food (the only thing in the fridge was yogurt and granola, which was fine for me, but two things Ronnie would eat only if stranded on an island with nothing else to eat), it was clear that we wouldn't be leaving until 2pm. Around 2:30pm we finally left, to go pick up the film of Petra we'd dropped off earlier (to be posted later). While Ronnie was inside the store, we got a call from his cousin who lives about 5 minutes away. So we told her we'd stop by for a quick visit. 30 minutes later, we finally extricated ourselves from her house to find our way out of Jerusalem. by this time, somehow, it was almost 4pm. Oh, and at some point in the morning, my cousin Steve called to ask if we'd pick up Ma'ayan at Har Halutz (an hour north of Afula). No problem....

And the traffic leaving Jerusalem was terrible. And just as we got out of town, Ronnie started feeling sick. And we needed to get gas. An hour later, we found gas and gave Ronnie a chance to walk around in the fresh air. But the station we stopped at wouldn't take American credit cards, so I had to give them all of the cash we had just to put a few liters in the tank. We were going to need to stop again.... The traffic leaving getting off the highway was of pre-Shavuot proportions and Ronnie used the occasion to continue emptying the contents of his stomach (pretty politely said, right?).

I dropped Ronnie in Afula, picked up Ayelet for the ride and we were off to Har Halutz. We picked up Ma'ayan, and headed back to Afula. We decided to take the scenic route, which, in the dark, really wasn't as scenic as I'd remembered. I also don't know this route at all, and totally needed to rely on Ayelet and Ma'ayan for the directions, which they sometimes gave me as we were about to miss a turn (Ayelet!), or when they (Ma'ayan) said one thing (straight) when they really meant something entirely different (left!)

I somehow convinced Ma'ayan that I'd found a new radio station, Reshet Dalet, that played only Abba on Thursdays. Since I'd only just found the station, I didn't know what bands they played on the other days of the week (but I'm thinking just Hasidic niggunim on Shabbat).

Since Ronnie wasn't feeling so well this morning, we came back to Jerusalem instead of going to Kibbutz to see more of his family. He's feeling a little better now - I still think it was something he ate (see, he should have stuck with yogurt and granola!).