June 17th, 2015

I’m sitting here in seat 37E on this 767 from Heathrow to Tel Aviv. The time is 22:10 GMT. I started my journey at 13.00 GMT -8, so 21.00 GMT on 06/16. Almost 23 hours of travel now.

I have met up with my group of about 40 people and seem to be putting some faces to names. LAX was an interesting airport. I recognized the long hallway with the white tile wall from ‘The Graduate’, but there was no moving sidewalk.

The baggage carousels were labelled by big black letters (A B C) and had this run-down 1960s feel to it. I was in LA. The carousel was poorly designed. Luggage rocketed out of the feeder belt into the carousel at high speeds, slamming into the metal carousel edge.Every single time.

The international terminal was very nice. Lots of big designer stores and a nice food court. I had Umami Burger for the first time and it was OK.  Not so sold on the Umami flavour. I think a craft burger in SF beats this any day.

I got into LAX hella easy. I killed two hours waiting for my flight. I falsely assumed the group would be a little early for the early check-in. Spent 2 hours fucking around–got a coffee to kill the time. What a shithole. I Saw some celebrity followed by the paparazzi as she ascended the stairs to go through security. No idea who it was but I loved that sound of the DSLRs clicking away. Hollywood, baby.

Met up with some group members and then the whole group near the front of the ticketing and international terminal. This is where I met Andrew. I remembered his trill SE Asian looking JanSport knockoff backpack. Lot’s of floral looking shit and a brown leather carabiner holster. First impression–cool.

I had met another guy–Devin–who was into watching the NBA Finals as well, so we found a sports bar to watch the game in. This is the same place I got my Umami Burger cherry popped.  We ate the burgers and watched the game in some weird kind of posh bar that was also in the food court. We ordered a beer each with the burger and enjoyed it with the game, despite direct orders not to drink from our tour guides. A bunch of other people joined us at this point. I believe I met Mackenzie, Elham, and Karen here.  This is where Devin and I determined that Karen H was sassy Karen.

Devin and I walked past the gate, didn’t see really see anyone there. We kept walking to find another sports bar to watch the rest of the game.  We found this place called Score at the end of the terminal–some sort of open plan airport bar.  A bunch of our comrades were there–also drinking.  We grabbed two barstools and got down to business.  I ordered another Stella as well.  Devin turned out to be a Cavs fan, while I was rooting for the Warriors. To be honest, I won $120 betting for The Cavs in Game 2, so I wasn’t exactly the most loyal fan.

Everyone else left Devin and I as we finished the game and charged our phones up a bit.  At some point Omer comes back and tries to fuck with us.  We had missed some sort of initial meeting and he is saying we are off the trip and that we’re in deep shit with Kelci. Jonah blew Omer’s cover on that one with his facial expression, and we saw right through his put-on.  We got a hustle on and walked down to the gate.

Kelci was giving us some sass, but we were kind of giggly from the beer and couldn’t take her seriously.  She was giving us this skeptical look and was asking us if we were on something.  Now that I think of it I wonder if she was sober herself.  After the fact I found out some people were on edibles for the whole flight.

The flight out to LHR was cool, 9 hours and some.  I sat in 36B, with Omer to my left, and Devin to my right.  We joked around for a bit, and then I watched ‘Ex Machina’.  It was dope. It took a long time to get through the last 20 minutes of the movie because the food arrived and we started bantering again.

The food was pretty shit.  We were forced to have a kosher meal, which was just clearly not as good.  You could see the regular trays, and it was obvious we got fucked over.  I lamented the plight of The Jews.

I passed out nicely with ear plugs, a travel pillow, blanket, and sunglasses.  I was using the glasses I got from the orientation. I awoke to my tray falling open and an awful kosher breakfast being served to me.  I just ate this sphincter shaped dessert and discarded the rest.

When we landed in Heathrow I had a nice English breakfast at some place that I think was called Pilots. The eggs were very orange–the hue I have desired to find in San Francisco, still to this day.  They also had heavy cream. Our waitress sucked–some Asian chick.  At some point Devin raises his voice and says ‘This service is shocking!’ as a homage to his South African dad.  Another waitress asks us what the problem is, but seems to ‘get it’ when we say who our waitress is.  We clearly got the dud.

The next several hours were spent bumming around the airport.  We chilled in some seats by Starbucks, played heads-up with a big group of us.  Tasted whiskey. Tasted Baileys.  Hung out in some cool lounger chairs with Omri, Devin, some other people.  The chairs faced out–viewing the Tarmac.