We checked out of the hotel after a nice breakfast and drove 1-2 minutes to the tomb of Rebbe Meir Ba'al HaNes. (Among other distinctions, Rebbe Meir is the source of so much Mishnaic material that the redactors of the Mishna don't bother quoting him by name much of the time, instead giving the rule, "סתם משנה רבי מאיר" ["the source of an uncited Mishna is Rebbe Meir"].) It seemed rude to be literally next door and not stop by, so we did, and we had a good daven/tzedakah-giving fest.
After that, we decided to go straight home. Instead of doing that, we accidentally wandered off of route 90S (still have no clue how we managed that: we've never lost it before). Eventually, we realized that those long stretches of fence really weren't familiar even a little bit, so we turned on Waze. (Waze is a GPS program for a smartphone. Like so many cool bits of technology, it started out as an Israeli company and was acquired by a large American company for a large American price-tag. This, by the way, is the Israeli dream.) While following Waze's directions to continue climbing into the Golan Heights (because it wanted us to make a series of legal turns many kilometers up the road with the same ultimate result as if we had made an illegal U-turn at the bottom of the beautiful mountains, we later learned), the air conditioner started blowing warm air.
Husbinator remembered the mechanic's advice to not let the engine temperature rise more than halfway up the gauge, and pulled over. I remembered my parents' black station wagon that could only drive for about 2 1/2 hours at a time before needing a rest, and suggested we pop the hood (carefully!) and go for a walk on the convenient dirt path across the street. After some discussion about whether a gap in barbed-wire fences indicated a lack of landmines or just a lack of barbed-wire fencing, I managed to decipher the paint on the stone in front of the path. As expected, it did warn us that the area was mined (the landmine signs were how we determined we were lost, in the first place: the Golan Heights are full of landmines and not on the way from Teveryah to Beit Shean), and to therefore not cross the fences. Yay, the dirt path was mine-free! Since we were holding the baby, we couldn't go on too long of a hike (climbing inclines that are greater than 30° with a baby in arms is yuck-o), but we saw a very pretty view and a reasonably interesting sign.
DANGER LANDMINES
BEHOLD YOU ARE FOUND IN THE MIDST
OF THE AREA OF OLD SYRIA
DO NOT GO DOWN FROM THE FENCES
-IDF
In my mind, some group of guys in the IDF got sick of hanging "DANGER! Landmines" signs, so painted this one to tell posterity, "It's not our fault, guys! Why the heck would we mine our own country? Syria did it, and cleaning up other people's messes... You know how hard that is. Go yell at them, OK?"
Anyway, our main focus was letting the car cool down. Between having no cell reception and it being too early to call America, anyway, I couldn't ask Abba how long it takes a car engine to cool enough to check the radiator. He knows. From his vast experience with that Chevrolet, I know he knows. But we did not know, so we gave the car a solid 45 minutes and a lot of hand-waving to make sure. Then we topped off the radiator and kept driving. Eventually, we learned of Waze's vile, law-abiding ways, and made our stinky U-turn. In retaliation, Husbinator coasted down the Heights in neutral. Ha! We just would have had to ride the brakes the whole way down, anyway, and the last thing we needed was to run out of gas, right? I thought it was brilliant. And funny. Much like a kibbutz owning a gas station. What a good idea! And how funny!
No comments:
Post a Comment