Journey Through Time

Happy 2006 everyone! I am recently back in the States from my little jaunt through Israel. It was a great jaunt, by the way - fun, meaningful, memorable, and shared with a great group of people. Now that I'm back, I'm catching up on life and all I missed in the first two weeks of this New Year. It's like I slept through it, except that I actually slept very little and am just now catching up. So, it's really not like I slept through it at all. It's more like I was just out of town or something. Profound, no? If you have any great stories from the opening days of our year, please share using the comment feature below. And remember, this is a family site!

Many people have asked me what my favorite part of Israel was. Was it the Western Wall? The Dead Sea? The falafel? The camels? The enchanting night in an authentic imitation Bedouin camp? No. No. No. No. And no. Ready? It was the Texas Longhorns' Rose Bowl victory, garnering a long-awaited, well-deserved, and hard-earned national championship! Not an "Israel experience," you say? Wrong! Massada, the ancient mountain fortress will forever be intertwined with Texas football in my (keen and reasonable) mind. For it was atop that mountain, in the early hours of the morning of January 5th, that I (and other Texas fans with whom I climbed) got up-to-the-minute info about the details of our glorious victory. I have pictures of our half-way-around-the-world, 10-hour-time-difference, enjoying-a-site-with-tremendous-religious-and-historic-significance victory celebration that I plan to send to The Alcalde, the magazine of the Texas Exes.

I didn't get to watch the game, but I did wake up at 3 a.m. to try (with a severe lack of success) to pick it up on a short wave radio. Though I couldn't find the feed, I did eat the baggie of Baked Cheetos that I had brought with me from the States to ensure that I would ingest some orange food on game day. That's probably why we won.

Okay, enough (for now) about the Texas win. Israel was great and I loved the group that I travelled with. So now I face the familiar challenge of keeping in touch with a new group of dispersed friends. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully, I can get them to come along for this ride: The Ride of Your Life.

Happy 2006! It's good to be back!