The next day we loaded up Siegfried and Roy and cranked our way up to the checkpoint to head south. From the start Andy was less than energetic. His cold had taken a toll on him and he was not well rested. About 15 kilometers past the checkpoint we rounded a bend and met a sturdy head wind blowing constantly from the direction we were headed. Andy lagged behind and was clearly not up to going any further. He wanted to end our journey and made me promise not to blame him for turning around. I have to admit that I was a little relieved that he had given up.
The idea of another 80 kilometers in the heat, against the wind only to arrive in an Egyptian version of Eilat hadn't really seemed very appealing. We parked the bikes in the middle of the empty road and shot our last BikeBrats cover photo for the year. Then we mounted and turned on our heals for the checkpoint. Within a few minutes of arriving we'd found a service cab, loaded the bikes on top and were motoring at a furious pace back to, where else but, Basata. The folks at Basata were less surprised to see us than we were to see Mohammed and Ingrid at Basata.
They'd decided that they needed a break from Inmo and that Basata was the place. They told us of the turmoil the massacre had caused, and how their conservative German clientele had canceled reservation after reservation. Mohammed was considering aloud what other business he could go into if he couldn't make ends meet at the resort. He was fearful for the future of his 65 employees and their families. It looked as though the terrorists in Luxor were having their way with the Egyptians. Sharif, on the other end of the spectrum, was expecting a banner weekend. The American University of Cairo was celebrating Thanksgiving and was planning their annual Basata invasion.
Luckily for us we'd made a good impression on the fair folks there and they found the most luxurious hut on the property for us. Save Lindsay and Hornyman, all of our favorite guests had gone, and even they were ready to part company. The languid Egyptian youth, though something else to look at, were nowhere near as interesting as our other friends at Basata. Hornyman, not willing to go unnoticed went out with a bang. He paid a visit to the common area wearing only \"butt floss\" (a g-string) at the same time the Egyptian television station arrived to detail the problems the tourist industry was encountering post massacre.
Imagine the fundamentalists' dismay upon seeing Santa's full moon on national TV?! Thanksgiving was to be upon us within a few days and we'd heard legend of some Americans coming to Basata from Cairo to celebrate. Connie Johnson was on her way and bringing a pack of friends and family. Andy and I were secretly planning an assault on their T-day gathering. Within a few hours of our arrival we'd secured an invitation to their table and to share in their home made pecan pie for dessert. It took only a few sentences to find out that they were rabid Catholics; fortunately we didn't put our feet in our mouths.
They had been to all of our pilgrimage points (save Notre Dame des Cyclistes) to commune with the Virgin as opposed to doubting her existence as we had. There was one truly tragic moment during our return to Basata. Our favorite two-year-old's mother and father were expecting a little brother or sister for Philippe. They were so happy to have a second and seemed to celebrate the upcoming event each day. There was a hushed atmosphere the day after thanksgiving, the family rushed off to Cairo cutting their vacation a few days short because the mother suffered a miscarriage. Everyone at Basata mourned for her loss.
Another pair of unhappy campers turned up on our last night there. Phillipe and Kiki, from Brussels, appeared at our dinner table looking a bit shell-shocked. They had come up from Luxor and had been at the temple during the massacre. Fortunately for them, they had gotten an early start and were in the upper reaches of the site when the shooting began, en route to the Valley of Kings. From their hiding place behind a rock, they heard the shots and screams that lasted over an hour. To add insult to injury, their charter flight back to Europe was cancelled (since no flights were coming in), forcing them to find another way back home.
My guess is that they'll be taking their next vacation in Switzerland, or maybe Luxembourg. Our last day at Basata was a fine one, snorkeling in the coral reefs with Lindsay, munching one last lunchtime pizza and relaxing at night playing backgammon and drinking scotch. We'd slipped into the easy pattern again and the momentum to leave was not there. Somehow we overcame the gravity that pulls you into a most relaxed state and headed by service taxi to the border. Once back in Eilat we paused amongst the Russian tourists only long enough to grab a bus ticket and lunch.
We made it to Tel Aviv that night in the company of two fellow Basata guests. They were darling girls, really charming, but clearly had an agenda to get us to their house and hog-tie us. We had to graciously refuse their hospitality and arrange to get the heck out of the mid east. We both were bitten with a fever to get home. Arriving in Tel Aviv, we ran into our stinky but cute friend Matthieu (from Petra) on his way home for a shower after work washing dishes. The next day we rendezvoused with the Rotbards again for a scrumptious Indian dinner, where young Adam practically passed out in his chicken tikka.
It was a school night and way past his bedtime. A number of options lay before us. One -- we could take the Nissos Kypros back to Athens and fly on our existing reservation. Two - fly directly from Tel Aviv to New York. Three - fly to Athens. We decided on the last because it would be the simplest logistic and the cheapest option. The one thing neither of us will ever forget is our interrogation at the Tel Aviv Airport. The agents separated us and quizzed us about every detail of our journey. Finally we proved everything by giving them a tour of the website and they waved scanning our bags in the xray machine.
Within 36 hours of arriving in Tel Aviv, we were on our flight and headed back to the States. At the airport in Athens neither of us was very surprised to find that the Greeks wouldn't be able to get our baggage onto our Delta flight in time. When we arrived in NYC we turned this misfortune to our advantage. We had Delta deliver the bikes and our bulky bags directly to Phoenix where we planned to stage the next segments of our journey. It was with mixed emotion that I left the States yesterday. Inhaling I was filled with anticipation and excitement knowing that I'd be on the road again.
Exhaling came as a sigh, thinking about leaving friends and family behind again as we set forth on the next leg of our journey. Most difficult for me was leaving my sister and family behind. This year we had a tumultuous holiday season. Just as my sister was putting the final arrangements together for her Chanukah party the world turned upside down for her. Coming home from my niece's championship soccer game she felt ill, went to bed and slipped into a diabetic coma for most of the next month. Her doctors were extremely pessimistic about her chances of survival and I sank into a depression so deep I thought I'd never find my way out.
My sister's will to live, her personal strength and her supportive nurses prevailed. I remember one Saturday morning with her laying in bed attached to more tubes and wire than you can imagine. That day I was feeling especially frustrated. I leaned toward her, called her name loudly and she opened her eyes turned her head and focused on me. A week later she responded more definitively. She opened her eyes and I began to tell her about my day. I was intentionally vague about a few details and she arched her eyebrows as if to ask me to clarify at the right time her voice rendered silent by the breathing tubes.
I gave her a clue visually and she laughed at the joke that I made that depended on a memory of an experience three years before. I knew at that moment that my sister was on the mend. Passing through LA on our way out of town it was so satisfying to see the progress she'd made since then. I was simultaneously thrilled that she is doing so well and feeling cheated that I'd constructed this trip and would have to leave her before I'd see her back in her house with her daughter. An In and Out Burger was the one thing we couldn't pass up on our way to the airport to catch our flight.
Its greasy cheesy goodness filled our tummies and colored our breath with its fresh onions. We topped off this balanced meal with See's candies that my mom had handed me as we left Orange County. When I left Andy at the curbside at LAX he was so overcome by his caloric intake that he left his sunglasses in the car. Upon my return he was overwrought about their loss. Budget Rent-a-Car came through, finding them and delivering them to the curb of our terminal. The happy bus driver was rewarded with a chocolatey reward. The See's came in handy once again when we used them to bribe the ticket agent to get us good seats on the flight.
Our good fortune there combined with Andy's famous in-flight cocktail put him out soundly on the flight. Andy swears by one vicadin, one halcyon and a glass of scotch for airplane-bound bliss. I slept soundly as well, non-chemically induced, my head buried under my blanket. I woke as usual two hours before we arrived at 3:30 AM as my head spun with the possibilities that our new journey would bring to us. We touched down before dawn our heads fuzzy from our long transit