Hi all!
It's good to be back; I 'pologize 'bout the cybernating. Well, Passover is over, the Passsover break is over, DW & I are back at work & Da Boyz are back at pre-nursery school & first grade, respectively.
Last Tuesday, (the last day of Passover outside the Land of Israel, but the first day after Passover here), we roadtripped to Ashdod (
http://tinyurl.com/37rs8 and
http://tinyurl.com/22z2h) for our first beach day of the season. We had a great time but the highlight of the day for Da Boyz was watching the robot at the huge playground in town (that we went to after the beach). Someone noticed a suspicious-looking box on a wall at the playground & someone called the police. (Given what occurred in Ashdod on March 14
http://tinyurl.com/3dgr6, folks there are a little cautious.) The police showed up & called the sapper (i.e. the one man bomb squad). He came with his van. He got into his special uniform & brought his robot out. The robot is a little thing on treads. It is equipped with a closed-circuit TV camera, arms & a gun. Using the controls in his van, the sapper manuvered the robot right up to the box. The robot placed a small proximity charge & then backed away. (All bystanders had been cleared away to a safe distance.) The sapper detonated the charge by remote control, hoping to thereby set off the explosive in the box (if there was one). The box stayed put. If there was an explosive inside, the proximity charge didn't set if off. The sapper then manuvered the robot back to the box & used the robot's arms to knock the box over. Nothing happened. Then he used the robot gun to fire 2 shots into the box, to either set off or disable any possible explosive inside. Nothing happened. He then came up himself, examined the box & gave the all-clear. All the kids (Yohanan included) ran over to watch him take his special suit off & load the robot back into his van. I carried Naor over to watch & when I asked him what was in the box, the sapper just said that it was a box (i.e. he didn't want to say). So, that was our day in Ashdod.
Last Friday, we went for a hike/outing in the beautiful Elah Valley (
http://tinyurl.com/2kosf,
http://tinyurl.com/2er95), just past the spot where David duked it out with Goliath (we drove over the very brook that David selected his stones from). We went to the ruins of Khirbet Madras, a town dating from Hellenistic times. There are some neat ruins of ancient synagogue, burial caves, etc. along an easy 1.5 mile trail through a lovely area. But the highlight of the hike was the underground warren of passages & chambers dug as a hideout by Jews during the Bar Kochba Revolt (
http://tinyurl.com/ypnjl and
http://tinyurl.com/2w4wj) against the Romans. The nice people at the Israel Nature & Natural Parks Authority have mapped out a route throught the tunnels & chambers by affixing reflector arrows on the walls. Yohanan & I went in for a look. We had a ball! Yohanan is small enough to have been able to go through most of the warren either in a very low crouch or on his hands & knees. Dear old Dad (i.e. moi) had to literally crawl on his belly a good part of the way. Some corners were 90-degrees & there were parts where we had to climb up/down the very narrow passageways. We kept passing the flashlight back & forth (it's pitch dark down there). Finally, after about 20 minutes, we emerged from the exit. It was
cool! Thank God that I'm not the least bit claustrophobic & Yohanan (all 7-years-old of him) was utterly fearless down there. It's nice to know that at the age of almost-41, I'm still limber enough to have contorted my way through the warren. (Wendy says that we must have been moles in previous lives!)
So, how is everybody?
Be well!
ssv
, Christian, married mother of three
