More buses...

We've taken the bus a lot lately. Today, we took it to our other house in Riverwest. But before we did that, we just missed the bus, so we had to wait 25 minutes. In the sun. With little shade. But we had cold water (with lemon, even).

We got to the house and found our miracle man, Steve, already there. The place is looking great. I can't believe we couldn't move back in. That's what kills me.... We met the woman who owns the house across the street. She's looking out for us. And so is the guy next door, who hasn't liked out previous two tenants, but then again, neither have we.

We had an appointment for someone to see the house, but they spent about 2 minutes inside and then let us konw that they really wanted something more modern. Okay. We've got someone else set up for tomorrow that sounds promising, and the woman across the street has a friend who is interested, but can't afford the rent we want.

The good news, we got to use our transfers to take the bus back - we just made it under the time wire. It's the little things that are important, right?

Car Shopping

Looking for a car wihtout a car is challenging. Yesterday, we took the bus, two buses actually, and then walked a mile to the Honda dealer. On the way, we passed all the other dealerships and thought maybe we shouldn't even bother ith a Honda if we had to walk so far (and it was 94 degrees out).

We got to the Honda dealer. They introduced us to Brett, a former financial planner, now car salesman. I thought there was an obvious answer to the most obvious question, but Ronnie was the one who asked it. "So why did you leave financial planning?" Brett replied that he's in a band and needed to be able to travel. I'm pretty sure he just wasn't good at it.

We asked to drive a Civic and a Fit. Reality check on the fit - he said no one test drives them and that there's a 6 month wait and that they are selling for $750 over the MSRP. I asked why their website said they had two in inventory, and he said they were sold. That's annoying.

So we were left with a Civic. He couldn't find the keys to the red one we wanted to drive, but found the keys to a beige one. It had no gas in it, so the three of us got in and drove next door to the gas station. He then said, "Why don't you guys drive around and bring it back when you're ready?"

Ok. We had introduced ourselves but not given him any real information. No driver's license, no phone number, no nothing. But here were were driving this car around. I thought that given our walk, one of us should should drop the other off at the Toyota dealership and then just head back when we returned the car. Or at least we should pick up lunch or something.

Test drive over, we walked down to Toyota. There, the salesman sat in the back seat when we drove the Corolla and the Yaris. He didn't seem particularly rattled by either of our driving. I think we just didn't try hard enough....

Back on the Bus

I had to go to both the library and the bank today. The catch - they're in opposite directions and I don't have a bike lock. Well, I have a bike lock, but I don't have the key to bike lock, so I may as well not have a lock. But I digress.

It's a hot day out and I was willing to ride to one location (and back) but not both. The library is a much shorter trip, but there's no where to leave my bike while I was in the library. I would be able to bring my bike into the bank (to the lobby, not all the way to the counter), but I still had to get to the library.

My choices:

• walk to the library and back. Get my bike and go to the bank.
• bike to the library and back. Walk to the bank (~2.5 miles one way, and it's really hot out)
• bike to the libary and then to the bank (again, it's really hot out)
• walk everywhere -doable, but I needed to make sure that I had time to actually walk to the bank before they closed.

And then I hit on solution number five.

• walk to the library and take the bus to the bank.

This proved to be the winner, and, because I got a transfer and was efficient in the bank, I got a bus back about 15 minutes after I got dropped off. It was the same bus driver and he looked at me a little funny, but he was pretty funny-looking to start with.

The buses here have what I like to call Bus TV. They might call it that too, I have no idea. It's a screen that has local news, weather, and a map of the bus route and where you are at any given moment. The map is only helpful if you know where along the route you have to go, but it's a nice feature.

Shorewood is going to the dogs

There are a lot of dogs here. Thankfully, unless you see the actual dogs, there is little evidence of their existence outside of a big dog bowl of water outside of most of the stores. I was out for an early bike ride today and on my way back, the dogs (and their owners) were coming out for their morning walks. At dusk tonight, I went for a walk, and there they all were again, going for their evening walks.

In some cases, it was not clear who was walking whom.

other good things about Milwaukee

Phone numbers are generally only seven digits. It's unusual to hear someone first give a different area code.

The grocery stores sell whitefish.

People who have been here for generations have serious accents.

The temperature in the summer (at least so far) is usually in the 70's.

Hybrids

We're living here right now sans automobile. I think we could mainly get by without one, but it would be more convenient if we had one. For a while now, I've been interested in buying a hybrid for our next car. It's less about saving money on gas and more about using less fuel in general. But they are SO expensive! And I wonder if the same energy costs go into manufacturing them as go into other gas guzzlers.

Right now, we're using the hybrid model of walk/bike/bus. I somehow convinced Ronnie to go out for a walk tonight. It's actually kind of cold out, but 2 miles later, you don't notice it so much. And yesterday I took my bike out for the first time. It's generally flat around here, but the small hills that there are, are long! I should have gone back out today, but I can still feel yesterday's ride in my rear end. I also tried the bus. It was pretty easy to use, clean and my only complaint was that the driver didn't wait until I sat down (with my groceries) to start moving again. It's a good thing I hadn't bought eggs.

Trader Joe's

There is a Trader Joe's in Milwaukee. And it is good. It's not within walking distance, but the bus goes there pretty quickly. And three blocks away is Schwartz's. One of the last independent bookstores around. We walked over last night and hung out for a while. I can see that happening often.

The apartment is sort of starting to come together. Slowly. If living among too much stuff constitutes starting to come together. We haven't hung any pictures yet. I'm waiting to finish moving furniture to do that. And it turns out there's a reason (actually two) I have crappy phone reception in my office - solid, old construction on the house in general, and probably too many layers of old lead paint in between the main phone and the office.

But again, the good news is that Milwaukee has a Trader Joe's....

Day 3 in Milwaukee

We live in a nice neighborhood. All the houses have a different architecture. The last neighborhood was nice, but all the houses looked the same. Here, they're brick, or lannon stone, or sided, and they all have different colored roofs. I walked over to the lake today - it's only four blocks away.

They've been doing some sort of digging in all of our yards. Now there's a hole in our front yard about 8 inches by 3 inches by 6 feet. Much to Ronnie's chagrin I did not go out and ask what it was all for. I figured if they're doing it to everyone, we're in it together, whatever it is.

Did I mention that it got cold out? We went from oppressive heat to needing a long sleeve shirt. At least it's easier to get stuff unpacked. Slowly but surely things are at least getting consolidated, if not actually put away.

In case you were wondering...

Laverne and Shirley have yet to stop by and say hello.

Also, it is definitely still very hot in Milwaukee. Theoretically, it's going to get cooler tomorrow. but they were also wrong about the storms we were supposed to get last night and all day today. We had about 15 minutes of rain. No thunder, no lightening (I suppose one does follow the other), just a little rain.

The heat is exhausting. We've made good progress on getting things together, but it's been slow because we can only really work in spurts. The kitchen is sort of usable and would be more so if I were 6 inches taller. The dining room is slowly getting emptied, but figuring out where it all goes is a challenge. And the office is just too crowded. I love our red couch, but really, there's no good place for it now.

I walked down to the library today. They've built a new one since we were here before. It's nice, and well air-conditioned. And tonight we walked to a restaurant we like. It's really not so far away, maybe a mile, but given how tired we are, it felt like a really long walk.

Milwaukee Cable Television

When you think there's nothing on at 4:30am, ou'd be wrong. Now, there are episodes of the original Star Trek. That is definitely something I didn't see in Israel! Of course, in order to find it I had to scroll through more Christian stations than I knew couldexist. And, in case you're wondering, the Star Trek episode was the one with the Scalasians (invisible, needed humans to help continue their people....)

It's 5am now, there's another Star Trek on, (Star Date: 51.25.9), the sun is coming up, and it didn't storm last night like they expected it to. 'm hoping they were wrong about it also being really, really hot again today. To find out for sure, I'd have to switch from Star Trek to a local station and this episode is looking pretty good... (there are Klingons).

Milwaukee

I'm disappointed. In my first 18 hours I have yet to see Laverne, Shirley, Lenny or Squiggy. I could have sworn I told them when my plane arrived....

I finally made it back last night and was welcomed by Ronnie, and lots and lots of boxes. The place in general looks great, if you can imagine it without boxes. It's not that Ronnie didn't do any unpacking - he did - it's just that we still have too much stuff.

And of course, today is one of the 20 or so days during the summer where air conditioning would be really nice. It's just so hot here. If I'm going to sweat this much, I'd just as soon be back in Israel. Thank gd for box fans.

We're in a nice, quiet neighborhood that's close enough to walk to the post office (did that this morning), the grocery store (did that this afternoon), and hopefully, if we're not too tired, to a restaurant we really like (tonight).

My goal for the day is to get the kitchen all unpacked. There's no actual pantry in the house, so I have to figure out which cabinets will get the food. There is plenty of cabinet space, so that's not so much an issue as the fact that I can't comfortably reach the second shelf and even with a step ladder can't really reach the fourth ones. Plus, I have to find the dishes. There's a dishpak in the dining room that I'm hoping has them. If not, it's a big mystery.

The paint colors look pretty good everywhere. The colors work well together and with the architecture. It was a little bit of a guess to make the choices, but they work.

I found two great things at the grocery store that I haven't seen in a few years: bread from Manitowoc and cheese curds. We went up to Manitowoc years ago and got a tour of the bread factory, complete with a pyramid shaped roof on the office of the president (it evidently promotes creative thinking).

Who Needs Paris?

It's the end of June. It shouldn't be freezing in Paris.

And yet, it was. That was my first indication that Paris is not all it's cracked up to be.

Charles de Gaulle (CDG) is undergoing a lot of construction. This is the place where one of the glass "tubes" collapsed last year and killed a few people. In the mean time, they take you from gate to concourse to gate on buses through the back of the airport. It could be really interesting, even in French, but it's not, and especially not on a cold, dark morning at the end of June. Really, it felt like being one of those post-apocalyptic movies, except they don't usually ride around on airport buses - they get cool motorcycles or old cars that miraculously run and there are cool explosions every so often.

Signage at CDG is non-existant. You get off the plane and have no idea where to go. The most obvious place, it seemed, was passport control, except that since I wasn't leaving the airport, that seemed not to be the place to go. On the otherside of the crush of people there was a small staircase that seemed to lead to the street. I had to ask three people where I was supposed to be going. There was not an immediate concensus (hence the third person).

I finally got to my gate. It was about 6:30am. I wanted to change my seat on the plane and waited 45 minutes to be told there was really nothing farther up (because I hate sitting in the back). But then, as the only ray of sunshine on a dark and cloudy morning, the clerk said the seven magic words that I had not expected to hear. "There's no one sittign next to you". That alone was worth 45 minutes and Row 42.

While I was waiting for my flight (delayed!), I noticed a lot of davening (praying) taking place. In addition to the two Jews putting on t'filin, there were also seven African men in robes and fancy hats who put down a prayer mat and started to pray. It was all pretty interesting.

When you are ready to board the flight, you take yet another long bus ride to get to the plane. A long ride, on a crowded bus with people who have already been flying for a few hours and haven't showered or brushed their teeth. You're dropped off on the tarmac facing a huge ramp leading up to the front door of the jumbo jet. Up close, those planes are huge. And the ramps are not escalators, but they should be.

Lastly, you know you're in trouble when get on the plane and it already smells. And in case you're wondering, it did NOT smell like fresh croissant.

3201

That's the number of kilometers I drove this trip. how do I know? I started out with a new car that only had 4 kilometers on it, and when I got the airport tonight, it ready 3205. That's a lot of mileage (or kilometrage, I suppose) for four weeks. Other than a lot of dust on the outside, and a lot of pretzel crumbs on the inside, I think it looked ok. There were no discernable scratches or dents and I think I took out all the garbage. And this time I remembered to take all my cds and the parking receipts that were in the arm rest.

Last Day

Well, it's my last day in Israel. Really, my last evening. Shabbat was fine. This week I was at the Knesset Towers. The food was terrible. I don't like that they give our participants food that is bad, but if I were a regular "guest" in the hotel and got food like that, I would not pay the bill.

Today has been full of meetings and packing. Avraham Infeld started at 8am, so I got a reminder of the five legs of the table. Not like I could really forget. (Memory, Family, Sinai, Israel (land and state), and Hebrew Language)

It's also been really, really hot here in Jerusalem, and they say it will be even worse tomorrow. I had a friend who was climbing Masada with his family today - I think his mother took the cable car. I think he's CRAZY to climb the snake path, but he did!

It's been a good trip, although a bit long. I still have to decide if I'm coming back in August. At this point, my guess is no....

Finding 59 Derech Beit Lechem

One of the things I do every other day or so is collect the mail from the apartment mailbox. Usually it's junk mail. Two days ago I got a notice about a package for the owners. I gave it to their daughter. Yesterday I saw a paper in the entry hall that indicated there was also a package for me.

Packages need to be picked up at the post office. In this case, the one located at 59 Derech Beit Lechem. That's just two streets away, so this morning, I walked down there. Like the US, even numbers and odd numbers are on opposite sides of the street. The first number I saw was 25, so I at least knew which side of the street I needed to be on. It took me nearly another block to find out that the numbers were going down and not up.

But then I glanced across the street and saw that the house address there was 50. Yes, 50 on one side of the street, 17 on the other. Either way, I knew I had to walk the other direction.

So I walked up a few more blocks. The street was getting increasingly residential and I was wondering if I'd somehow missed a quick even/odd block switch. But the numbers on the even side of the street were in the 80s, so I figured I had to be close.

When I reached 57, I was thinking that maybe packages needed to be picked up at the mailman's house because all I saw were big apartment buildings. Hey, this is Israel, anything is possible. And then there was 59. The entrance to an apartment building. Maybe I wasn't so far off?

Then I noticed a guard standing at the entrance of the driveway and thought I should look just a little farther. Aha! Signs for the post office. Basically, it was a little hole in the wall in the back of the apartment bulding. I am still convinced that the mailman lives there though.

There was a long line, and three counters open. No one was wearing a uniform, unless the national Israeli Mail Service uniforms are also layered tanktops. There was a man yelling at them to find out where he was supposed to pay some sort of bill. He had clearly been given the run around and he was finally told he had to go out to the mall to some office there. He did not look happy when he left.

And then it was my turn. I gave them the little slip of paper and after much confusion, I finally got my package. I think they couldn't figure out why there were two packages to the same address, one for the apartment owners, one for me, in care of the apartment owners, but I was only there to pick up one. Since they ultimately didn't ask me for any identification, I probably should have just picked up both of them....

Gay Pride Parade

Today was the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem. They started closing city streets first thing in the morning to prepare and getting around town was not easy given the closures. The ultra-Orthodox have been protesting for days and there were some fears of violence at the Parade.

We got to the area about 5pm, and could tell that there were thousands of people up and across the street for what looked like blocks. From where we parked, about six blocks away, up until where we finally were at the end of the parade route, we saw hundreds of police. And when we finally got to the end of the parade route, we were held back by barricades and more police. There were all sorts of different law enforcement types - regular police, military police, and some guys dressed in all black on black motorcycles. I would have thought 'ninja' if I didn't know better. Really, there was a tremendous amount of weaponry there. I had no concern for my safety, but I was wondering what would happen if there was a crime committed in any other part of the city!

As I mentioned, the streets were all blocked off. We were behind some simple barricades, but up the block, there were two city buses being used to block the streets. We think there were some Haredim behind them protesting. Right next to us - literally 2 feet away - about 8 religious men started chanting horrible things and of course, all the of the television cameras came running. I mean really, it was 8 people, max. And then the religious women started blowing plastic whistles. They were SO annoying, but at least they weren't shouting hateful things.

Other than these folks, it was a really nice crowd. Lots of rainbow balloons, flags, and stickers. And there was a great banner over the entrance to one of the parks announcing the parade that had a skyline of Jerusalem cut out of a rainbow, and a pink lion (the lion is the symbol of Jerusalem). I saw a few people I knew and figured out that I wasn't going to get close to some of the other people I knew were there.

There was supposed to be a big "after-party" in the park, but it was moved to a site a mile or so down the road. We never made it there. By the time we made our way back to the car, drove home and walked back down toward town, it was already getting late....

Same old, same old

Well, another day in Jerusalem. No major crises yesterday and we haven't penciled in any of them in for today. That said, the day is young...

Survivor

Anyone who knows me knows that I like watching Survivor. On in the background as I work now is the first episode of season five. I remember maybe three of the faces - including one of the best players ever (Stephanie) and the guy who won, who was one of the most boring winners ever. Actually, if memory serves, the whole season was pretty boring. Earlier today they had the season finale of Season 2, which was a pretty good one (and introduced us to Amber, of Rob and Amber fame.

I still say that there's nothing on television during the day worth watching, but at least there's something sort of interesting in the background....

Driver's Education

I think there should be a Potemkin Village built that will allow those learning to drive to take the time they need, allow them to make the mistakes they invariably will, and most importantly, stay off the roads and out of the way of the rest of us. At least here in Israel, those learning to drive are in cars that have a big "lamed" on top of the car, so you know who to stay away from. It doesn't really help that the rest of the drivers on the road are a little crazy....

Life Cycle of the Airport

One of our groups was departing earlier today and I needed to see some of the staff and one of the students before they left. I'd been at a meeting at Yad Vashem (it's sort of weird to go there and really just be interested in the coffee shop) and left a little later than I should have and then encountered construction traffic.

I did make it to the airport by 1pm and I believe I broke a land-speed record or two in my efforts. Needless to say, I made it without a scratch and I think even the cab drivers were impressed.

It was pretty crowded - I guess there are a lot of 4pm departures. It felt like it does before the midnight departures except people aren't already tired from a long day. Mainly, there's no where to sit and lots of luggage carts to get around. And now, at 6:30pm, it's so quiet you wonder if the airport may be closed for some unknown reason. I guess the rush starts again in a few hours.

One sad thing about the airport is that the hummos place no longer has mushrooms. You can get hummos with ful (brown beans), which I had last week, or with chickpeas, which I had today. Neither one is as good as the mushrooms used to be. The man behind the counter said they weren't as popular as the other two. I thought the ful wasn't so good at this place, and the chickpeas on top of hummus is just sort of redundant.

But there's free wireless, and there's something to be said for that....