It’s been quite a while since my last post. In that time things have been ridiculously crazy, leaving me nearly no free time. However, it’s been fun.
First, Ana gave me a belated birthday present a few weeks ago. She bought me an hour-long ultralite flight over the Sharon plain in central Israel. We took off around Tel Mond, flying first over the pet cemetery where we recently buried Sneakers. From there, we headed West to fly near the Wingate Institute before heading briefly out over the water. It was a stunning flight. I got to see some really nice things from the air, such as a golf course I didn’t even know existed.
That same weekend we also welcomed back a really good friend of mine and his family to Israel. They’d moved to the US last year, but after about 10 months, decided to come back for personal reasons. Ana and I are really good friends with them, and not being able to drop in on them in Arad really bothered us while they were away. Strangely enough, his return seems to have kick-started a resumption of SAR team call-outs.
On the same Saturday night as Ana and I sat down to order dinner at Muza, Arad’s more or less only pub, my beeper went off. It was the first time in MONTHS that this had occurred! The rescue was not anything overly adrenaline-inspiring, but we had fun nonetheless. We had to find a group of between 5-8 Russian hikers who’d been rappelling in the area and had become separated. They didn’t even know to tell us which canyon they’d been hiking in. The initial call-out was at 8pm, and we did not return to Arad until 2am after finding them all safe and sound.
I was busy at work during the following week, but this rescue was followed up by another few rescues that I couldn’t join in on. At least we’re seemingly back in business.
Hmm…other than that I was asked to help out with this year’s Itamar Iliya Mountain Bike race in Arad. New people have taken over since the first year I helped out in 2003, and I’m still undecided. More to come on this.
Getting ready for heading back to work tomorrow. With one of our network guys in the US on training, I might have to cover some of his workload on top of everything else. Doesn’t the pressure let up? hehe. At least next weekend is our monthly SAR training, so I have that to look forward to.
[tags]SAR, rescue, search&rescue, mtb, Arad, Israel[/tags]
