Out of the fire…

…and into the frying pan. The COVID numbers are rising in Israel now.  I just left for a two week work trip to Arizona – one of the few places where COVID is worse than in Israel!  Arriving at Ben-Gurion airport they have all the entrances sealed off except one.  And you can’t even get inside the airport without a ticket, meaning my family couldn’t even enter the airport with me.  They take your temperature before entering the building and give you a green armband that you have to wear until you’ve boarded the plane, to signify that you’ve been checked.  The airports were empty, similar to how it was back in March during my last trip here.  

The hospitals here in AZ are getting a little overwhelmed.  The ICUs are full and all the ICU rooms have plastic wrap over them to turn them into makeshift negative-pressure rooms.  No visitors are allowed in the hospitals, so the corridors are all empty.  And when i showed up for work the first day, I was immediately given the new “standard-issue” regular surgical face mask, N-95 face mask, and one of those large face shields.  The highways here are quite empty, even during rush hour.  The shuls are all still closed just like in Israel, but at least there people can have small services outside with social distancing.  Here in Phoenix that’s not possible in the summer, so the only semblance of community here is on zoom.  I’m planning to see some friends one day while I’m here – we’re going to sit on their driveway together after dark for a while.  Remember back when this started and everyone was saying how it would probably die down by the summer when temperatures started to rise?  Well, it’s 115 here.  And the virus is still raging with no end in sight…

And how does it feel to be back in the US again?  Its fine, its familiar, but it is definitely much bigger, much more spread out, much quieter, and perhaps because of those things there’s a bit of a more lonely feeling here.  Of course I’m staying here alone without my family as well, which makes the whole thing just a bit more weird  – to be in your old “home” without your wife or kids with you.  

And just to keep things interesting, I had booked my tickets on El Al.  And – you guessed it – they cancelled the flights just about a week before my flight.  So that’s two trips in a row that have been cancelled by El Al due to COVID.  I thought to myself, there’s no way they’ll be able to do anything for me within one week, so I booked myself new tickets on United – still the only other airline flying into Israel.  And two days later – four days before my flight – I get an email from El Al saying they’ve rebooked me on United, and is there anything else they can help me with!  So I emailed them back and said, “wow, that’s great, I never thought you’d be able to do that so fast so I booked myself tickets on United already.”  To which they replied that it would be best if I could get my own United tickets refunded because if I wanted to have El Al refund me it would be a very, very long time before they were in any financial position to be able to do that.  So I called United, and by some fluke of nature I had booked “flexible” tickets which were refundable.  So I got my United tickets refunded, kept the El Al rebooked tickets on United (which were actually on the same exact flight, meaning I had two seats booked on that same flight for a few days), and eventually arrived here safely.