Eric and I drove up to Jerusalem 3 days ago. On the way we saw a few camels that were dressed up in some colorful garb. I really knew nothing about the place until I arrived. I got a map that showed all the super cool places/religious sites and realized I knew nothing. So yesterday I went on a tour which was awesome because our tour guide told us everything.
I’ve been extremely active the last few days which has caused quite a bit of pain in my recovery. I can feel where the metal bars are wired to my ribs. I can feel the metal digging in and carving its place in my ribs. This keeps me from doing quite as much as I would like.
This morning I woke up and bounced my way across Jerusalem to the Muslim quarter to check out the Al Aqsa mosque. There is a rock here that the Jewish faith believes the entire world was created around and the Muslim faith believes Mohammed rose to heaven there. I got there 10 minutes before it closed to visitors so I was basically walked through by the guard but it was still super cool.
The day went on, it got hot as balls again, and I hike back to the hostel to take a little rest. I was on my computer outside when a little cat jumped up on my computer and snuggled into my barrel hat for a nap. There was a girl outside who owned the cat who thought it was funny. Her name is Maali and I noticed she was packing a hookah. I asked if I could join and soon I was sharing a hookah with an Arabic family of two sisters, a brother who is a body builder who got first in a competition for all of Israel, and the Mom. They were impressed by my hookah smoking skills so they invited me to dinner. It was a super authentic and delicious meal of chicken cooked with rice with yogurt. It sounds boring but it was extremely delicious.
After my trip to the Philippines I jumped on an atlas plane bound for Phoenix Arizona. Phoenix would be the place where I would pay “Dr J” from the Mayo clinic to pop my chest out, put some metal bars underneath and go to town on the left side of my rib cage. It is my first time having a major surgery and the recovery process has been much more excruciating than I expected. I had pectus excavatum where my chest went in much further in the middle than it should and it was putting pressure on my heart and lungs. I’ll save the gross photos they took of my insides for another time. But, they basically use some machine to pop it out, reinforce it, and then take the bars out in 3 years. The left side of my ribs were also super jacked up and I don’t really know what she did to them but now they are absolutely perfect.
After the surgery I stayed in the hospital for 2 wonderful nights and then my Mother drove me home to our Airbnb. We stayed at a rather random Airbnb and out host would be destined to be an older black lady by the name of Linda. She would turn out to be an absolute ball of pleasure, help my tremendously through recovery, allow me to stay for free after my Mom left, and quickly dubbed me as being, “part of the family.”
Flirting with the nurses by showing off my lung capacity
All in all I spent about 10 days in Phoenix recovering. I weaned off of pain medication about 4 or 5 days after the surgery and just sat in my LA-Z-BOY in pain and my own sweat through each day and night drinking kombucha through a straw and watching Narcos. This lifestyle could not last long so I decided to test myself and sat on a plane to San Diego for oldtimes sake. The planeride went well but it’s weird being totally handicapped while looking fit as a fiddle. The gate agents could not grasp why I was telling them that there was no way I could lift my very small bag into the overhead compartment.
I stayed with my buddy Kyle in San Diego, where I got to bring in his 25th birthday with some margaritas and tequila(he had one of those lucky years where his birthday fell on margarita monday). My travel bug soon started to itch though and when an old friend from Israel invited me to come visit it seemed like the thing to do. So I grabbed my passport, took a triple dose of morphine and sat on a 14 hour flight that would cross the north pole for Tel Aviv, Israel. I cannot explain enough how uncomfortable this flight was. There was pain in my chest and ribs, and it quickly spread to my back and head. 4 hours in I was even embracing the dude who was now sleeping on my shoulder as a caring acccident.
I made it to Israel and met up with Eric and his girlfriend Olga at the airport. We took a taxi to Bat Yam and I chugged some water and fell asleep in my own sweat yet again. The next few days consisted of watching the beach from the window, sweating, exploring the beach a little, drinking tea while watching the beach, wondering why all cities really just seem the same, and drinking a few day beers.
The citylife couldn’t last so after Olga left Eric and I rented a car and shot off towards the dead sea. On the way we saw lots of nomads, camels, a nuclear research facility, desert, sand, and eventually only sand. We made it all the way to the Dead Sea where we would crawl into our hostel beds.
Camels!
We have been here for 2 days now and have done quite a lot. We swam in the dead sea which was way stranger of an experience than I have had described. The floating out of the water is really a thing and it happens to a way stronger degree than I would have imagined. It’s hard to keep from flipping over. Its quite nice when you just submit and let yourself float on your back though. The taste of the sea is indescribable. If you take a little bit and touch your lips it will burn and taste like the most oversalted food you could ever imagine. It hardly even tastes like salt it’s so intense.
We also did quite a few hikes here. We hiked up to check out Lot’s wife which is a pillar of salt that supposedly was a woman who was turned as such by God in the bible and we hiked up mount Sodom, also some biblical references there. They were super cool places to see and we got some amazing drone videos there. Our last high was to see this sand pillar that kind of resembles a mushroom.
Mount SodomLot’s Wife – from the side you can really see the resemblance to a womans face, but mostly it looks like a salt pillar
Mushroom looking mound
All in all I find Israel way cooler than I thought I would. I’ve never seen a desert quite like this before. Every step you take the earth erodes below you. Everything is dry and dead and beautiful. The sun beats you slowly into a dry little raisin. Our plan from here is to drive back past the dead sea. Have a final salty dip and head towards Jerusalem.
