Bad Day according to Chris (PG-13)

WARNING:  do not let your children read this.  This is Chris telling it how it really was.

OK, so yesterday was so freaking bad that I had to stuff my desire to quit and “just keep swimming….”  What was an edgy but exciting challenge for me was emotionally devastating for the girls, and since it is my job to not only take care of them, but make them FEEL taken care of, it was a really really bad failure of a day.

The truth is, for me, I was fine.  I enjoy the adventure, the new experiences, and although ultra-conservative pilgrim-Quaker-Lincoln looking people creep me out when they gather in an angry herd, I really did not feel like anyone was going to hurt us at any time.

Getting into the old city was quite an adventure.  Turns out, it’s not normally like it was last night.  Last night and today were the most holy days of the year, pretty much and the arabas and Jews seem to hate each other, except when there’s a common goal, like taking the money of the tourists!  Let me rephrase that.  The Arabs seem to hate the Jews, and the Jews don’t seem to like anyone…. anyway, I digress.  If I had a breaking point, it would be when I realized that I was not going to be able to continue driving up the steep, narrow alley that I took the car up while trying to escape the children of the corn.  Fortunately, I was able to back the car out, and get it out of their gathering without getting stoned.

Upon arrival at the Dung gate,  (at the Old City where our room is) I had a nice chat with an Israeli gate guard who was from Michigan.  Nice guy.  Turns out they have our really old M-16s, not even the A-2’s that I used in my USMC training.  We basically walked into and through the wailing wall area with all our stuff on the way to our room, and had to press through an angry mob and convince the Jewish military guys to let us get to our hostel.  Our bedroom has an exterior door which remains locked, but is literally 10 feet from the Chain Gate, which only Muslims can use.  There were angry scuffles outside our door for a good part of the night, fortunately, I brought ear plugs for all, so I put the fam to bed and headed out for a tour with two British guys, Andy and Christopher, who were kind enough to take me around and explain things to me.  We got Kabobs outside the Damascus gate, walked past the New Gate, stopped at an ATM, and eventually got over to the Dung Gate *about 2 miles later) so I could get the rest of the stuff we needed out of the car.  Unfortunately, the guards would not let me into the wailing wall area with my pillows and bags, they simply told me to go around, with no explanation of how that would work.  I “accidentally” found the quickest way back to the room and was in bed by 1am.

I felt victory.  I got over my apprehension, got my bearings, and managed to piss off a lot of people in the process without knowing it… mostly my wife and kids, who finally stopped crying mid morning today.