{"id":372,"date":"2005-10-29T19:07:36","date_gmt":"2005-10-29T19:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newblog.odedsharon.com\/?p=372"},"modified":"2005-10-29T19:07:36","modified_gmt":"2005-10-29T19:07:36","slug":"","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newerblog.odedsharon.com\/?p=372","title":{"rendered":"Tripping Israel with Roger Nygard"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThe day after Icon we managed to get some sleep, and then I went to
\nvisit my grandmother while Lee stayed at home resting some more. I got
\na call from Alon Peer inviting us to join a dinner with Roger at Jacko,
\na fish restaurant chain.
\nLater I get a call from Hagai tell me that Alon also invited us to join
\na trip to Masada with Roger on Saturday, and that we have to be at the
\nbottom of the serpent’s trail at 14:00, and later it was earlied to
\n13:00.  You all know my tendency to wake up late. Especially now
\nwhen I’m vacating at home with my World of Warcraft addiction. We
\nfigured that getting to massada would take around 3 hours. so that
\nmeant waking up at 9:00 which i wasn’t used to. You can imagine how
\ntired I was, waking up 5 hours before you usually get up.
\nThe plan: 4 cars taking 14 to massada. 2 from Jerusalem, with a bunch
\nof people like Mike the man, Joe Brown, and Shmuel Shmuel, and 2 from
\nTel-Aviv, with us and Hagai in one car, and Roger, Alon, Nadav and
\nYaara in the other car.
\nI drove with my bicycle with my parents back from my grandmother’s and
\nstopped by at their house to pick up their Volvo car so we can make it
\nto Masada.
\nWe woke up early and went to pick up Hagai in Rishon, and met with Alon
\nand the others at Rishon’s train station, where THIS happened:
\n\"Alon's<\/a>
\nAlon’s car break down. His battery is Dead.
\nSo we have a big decision to make. Either ditch Alon, Nadav and Yaara
\nthere and take Roger in our car, find another way to get them to
\nMasada, or jump start the car with our battery, and continue, hoping
\nfor the best.
\nWe decided or the later. Probably a mistake. I’ll philosophize about it later.
\nOn the way, Hagai suggests we make a stop at the Phillip farm, to have a Pita and Labane breakfast.
\nWhile Lee and Hagai stood in line, I took some pictures.
\n\"Roger<\/a>
\nRoger and camel.<\/p>\n

\"Roger<\/a>
\nRoger enjoying his Pita<\/p>\n

A bit late, we continued to Arad, on the way to Masada.
\nIn Arad, I detect a sign saying “Tourist Information” so I decided to
\nstop and ask for direction, the time was already around 14:00, already
\nan hour past our rendez vu time, and with more way ahead of us to the
\nSerpent’s trail.
\nThe lady at the counter says that Masada site closes down at 16:00, and
\nthat the way from Arad to the Serpents road takes more then an hour,
\nand then more then an hour to climb up, at that we’d miss all the point
\nin going to massada, since we’ll be forced to leave as soon as we go
\nup, she suggest that we go to the Battery trial.
\nFor all you non Israeli blog readers, Masada mountain has two trails
\nleading to it, one from the east and called the Serpent’s trial, and
\none from the west called the Battery trail. The Serpents trail is a
\ntough, steep climb, and the Battery trial, which was built by the
\nRomans,  is relatively short and easy. There’s also a cable car
\ngoing up and down from the East side of the mountain for those who
\ndon’t want to climb, or simply can’t.
\nThere’s no road connecting the two sides of Masada. You have to go
\nthrough Arad in order to get from one side to the other. The drive is
\nabout 50KM in length and is full with dangerous curves.
\n\"Dangerous<\/a>
\nWatch out ! Dangerous Curves.<\/p>\n

So we inform Shmuel and the 2 other cars that they should start going
\nup, and that we’ll drive to the Battery trial and meet them on top of
\nthe mountain. This wasn’t the plan, but with  the current
\ncircumstances, that was the best choice we had.<\/p>\n

\"Camels\"<\/a>
\nOn the way, we saw some camels. Literally.
\nIt’s no wonder Americans think that Israel is all about camels. In the
\nsingle trip we take outside suburbia, we see multiple camels !
\nWe Almost made it to Masada, and then I lose sight of Alon in my rear view mirror.
\nWe stop and call them up, and they say that they’re stuck, but that someone was helping them.
\nSo we take some pictures:<\/p>\n

\"Massafa\"<\/a>
\nA very nice view of the mountain, with the Battery trail.<\/p>\n

\"Lee<\/a>
\nLee and Hagai.<\/p>\n

\"Lee<\/a>
\nLee and Myself<\/p>\n

\"All<\/a>
\nAll three of us !<\/p>\n

We make it to Masada and start our climb up.
\n\"Alon<\/a>
\nI took a picture of Alon taking a picture of Roger taking a picture<\/p>\n

\"up<\/a>
\nRoger, being in very good physical shape, and jogging  a lot,
\nsimply ran up the mountainside and was way ahead of us in mere seconds.<\/p>\n

\"Lee<\/a>
\nLee’s physical shape had the opposite effect.<\/p>\n

\"Shadows\"<\/a>
\nShadow play can make things look different…<\/p>\n

\"on<\/a>
\nSoon after we reached the top, a bit tired from the climb…<\/p>\n

\"tired\"<\/a>
\nbut not as tired as these guys.
\nI’m glad we went up and down the Battery and not the Serpent…
\nThe time was already 15:05, less then an hour to go, and Shmuel Shmuel had a long series of lectures about the place.
\nHe started lecturing, and we strolled behind relaxing and chatting to ourselves.
\nI, naturally, took some pictures.<\/p>\n

\"Lee<\/a>
\nLee with Mike the man and Nadav and Yaara in the back<\/p>\n

\"Naama\"<\/a>
\nNaama is filming with Roger’s camera while he’s taking her picture.<\/p>\n

\"naama2\"<\/a>
\nAnd showing her how to use the camera.
\nI haven’t met Naama before, and I asked Nadav about her, he didn’t know
\nas well, but according to some gossip, what I understood, is that Naama
\nis a member of the Role player’s organization and became a groupie of
\nRoger during Icon, and subsequentally joined Starbase972.
\nYay to Roger to enlisting more people to Starbase unknowingly !
\nMore about Naama later.<\/p>\n

\n\"Mike<\/a>
\nMike, Nadav, and Yaara.<\/p>\n

\"Hagai\"<\/a>
\nHagai.<\/p>\n

\"Alon<\/a>
\nAlon, and his girlfriend, which name eludes me at the moment.<\/p>\n

\n\"people\"<\/a>
\nAnd all of `em together,<\/p>\n

\"Lee<\/a>
\nLee is Tired, and Mike is sunburnt.<\/p>\n

\"Look\"<\/a>
\nLook ! Over there !<\/p>\n

\"No<\/a>
\nNo ! Over there !<\/p>\n

\"Roger\"<\/a>
\nThere’s a similar picture from Roger’s camera, but the one I took  from my camera turned out better.<\/p>\n

\"Camp\"<\/a>
\nAbandoned Roman camp.<\/p>\n

\"Massada<\/a>
\nMasada ruins<\/p>\n

\n\"Group<\/a>
\nGroup photo of all of us !<\/p>\n

\nThe time was nearly 16:00 and the cable car shuts down at 16:00, so the
\nother half of the group were in a hurry to leave, and we had to decide
\nwhat to do. Alon wanted to head straight home in order to spend as much
\ntime driving while there was still light. So we suggested that we’ll
\ntake Roger ourselves and meet the other two card in the dead sea and
\neat something there before we go home.
\nWe walked down and while Lee and Alon went to jump start Alon’s car and
\ncharge his battery for a while, me and Roger wondered to look at some
\nwater caves.
\n\"Caves\"<\/a>
\nMountain side, The dead sea, and caves.<\/p>\n

\"Roger\"<\/a>
\nRoger inspecting something down.<\/p>\n

\"cave\"<\/a>
\nThis is one of the caves, There were two, this was the first we saw.
\nIt is VERY high, the next picture should give you some perspective
\n\"high\"<\/a>
\nYeah. That’s Roger standing there. The stairs were missing the hand rail, and I was VERY SCARED climb down the stairs.
\nRoger just ran down easily as if there was nothing to be afraid of. I’m
\nscared of my own clumsiness. I tend to slip and fall in less dangerous
\nsituations.
\n\"Oded<\/a>
\nAfter a few steps down, I started “Crab walking”. Roger was very amused. I wasn’t. Maybe a bit.<\/p>\n

\"up\"<\/a>
\nThe climb up was much easier.<\/p>\n

\"cave<\/a>
\nA few seconds later we found a second cave. It was very annoying finding out that this one HAD a perfect hand rail.<\/p>\n

\"Roger<\/a>
\nRoger and Masada.<\/p>\n

And then we started our way back to Tel-Aviv, and to Arad on the way.
\nSadly, the 15 minutes that we charged Alon’s car didn’t do much good. A
\nfew minutes after we started driving back his car stopped again.
\nWe repeatedly jump started him, along with a few more charging minutes and drove 2 more km’s.
\nAll in all we did the 20km from Masada to arrad with about 6 stop. It
\ndid take us 2 hours to get to Arrad, and another hour in Arrad to
\nfigure out what to do with Alon’s car, while he was on the phone,
\narguing with his parents, and trying to find out a tow truck.
\nThe whole situation wasn’t very pleasant. On one hand, Alon is a
\nfriend, and we didn’t want to leave him stranded 200km away from home,
\non the other hand there’s Roger, our guest, which I was getting hungry
\nand irritated, and yet, he didn’t show it at all. He was a real good
\nsport about the whole ordeal, and gave us some helpful advice along the
\nway.
\nI though about my trip to Taiwan, and try to imagine them dealing with a situation like this.
\nChinese, and therefore also  Taiwanese have a big thing with
\n“face”. It’s really important to them the way they look in the eyes of
\nothers, especially international guests.
\nFirst, I’m sure that they wouldn’t have organized a trip like that, but hire a bus to take us all to massada.
\nLets assume though that it this might have happened to a group of
\nTaiwanese. They’d probably ditch Alon and Nadav and Yaara in Tel-Aviv
\nand go without them. They wouldn’t have taken the chance of this
\nhappening.
\nBut we have a higher sense of friendship, of togetherness. I couldn’t
\nhave left them in Rishon without the satisfaction of going to Masada.
\nWe took a risk. Risk is our business. That is what a starship is all about.<\/p>\n

In the end we left Alon there waiting for his parents to come form
\nTel-Aviv, he found a car battery in the Arad shopping mall, and managed
\nto get home.
\nWe decided to go eat something in Beer-sheva. Wanting to try some more
\nlocal food, we took Roger to Nafis. We had a very big dinner of
\nJachnoon, Humus, Fatoot, Jerusalem Mixed chicken and many other small
\nand tasty dishes.
\n\"food\"<\/a>
\nFinishing the meal with some Nana tea and an empty plate of Bavarian cream.
\nAll in all it was a very exciting and eventful day, and with many nice pictures to fill up my hard drive.
\nWe got home by 22:30, tired but satisfied, and went to sleep preparing for the next day.<\/p>\n

Going to Jerusalem with Roger<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, waking up way too early for me, we were set to pick up Roger from his hotel.
\nHaving no obligations on Sunday, we volunteered to escort Roger to
\nJerusalem, as he had some interviews to complete with Rabbi’s who lived
\nin the greater Jerusalem area.
\nThey day itself was pretty uneventful. We drove to Jerusalem, while
\nRoger made some phone calls to set up the interviews. We got there,
\nleft him to the interview, and went to eat brunch with Ofir in a coffee
\nshop nearby. Then we came back to pick up Roger, sat with with at the
\nsecond half of his prolonged interview with Rabbi Baruch Kaplan.
\nThen we drove Roger back to his hotel. <\/p>\n

\"roger<\/a>
\nA local religious man, passing by us, gave us Ethrog and Lulav to bless.<\/p>\n

\"shatner<\/a>
\nCan you believe that there’s a street called “Shatner St.” ???<\/p>\n

\nPretty uneventful, but yet enlightening. On the way, We talked with
\nRoger about his documentary’s subject – Existence, about film making,
\nabout health food, about Israel, and about himself, and ourselves, and
\nabout some other stuff.
\nHe had another meeting with an Israeli screen writer, at his hotel, and invited us to stay and hear what the guy had to say.
\nI wasn’t impressed personally by the story or the script, and even more
\nby the lack of presentability that this writer came with.
\nAlthough it’s based on a real life story, the story I heard wasn’t
\nunique, or new, but a the same ol’ dramatic presentation of some life
\naltering events which I’ve seen over and over in the cinema. I tend not
\nto like things that are “based on true stories” as they tend to be
\nboring.
\nMoreover, the fact that he insisted that the movie relies on two big
\nHollywood persona’s as main actors, only strengthen the fact that his
\nstory was weak to begin with. When I see a movie, I prefer a
\nbreathtaking story with two unknowns in the lead. Like “Free
\nEnterprise”, which is also based on a true story of the life of Robert
\nBurnett and his friend Mark. They had a great story with good unknown
\nactors in the lead.
\nAfter the meeting we said our farewells to Roger as he went on a dinner
\ndate with that Naama girl. I hope they had fun in their date, as they
\nboth looked very eager to.<\/p>\n

To summarize, we had tons of fun hanging around with Roger, we hope to
\nsee him next year when he finished his documentary and comes back to
\nshow it, or sooner, if we take up on his offer to visit him in LA.<\/p>\n

Thanks Roger !
\nSee you soon !<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The day after Icon we managed to get some sleep, and then I went to visit my grandmother while Lee stayed at home resting some more. I got a call from Alon Peer inviting us to join a dinner with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newerblog.odedsharon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newerblog.odedsharon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newerblog.odedsharon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newerblog.odedsharon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newerblog.odedsharon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newerblog.odedsharon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newerblog.odedsharon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newerblog.odedsharon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newerblog.odedsharon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}