Bring Back David Whidden

I will not rest until Dave Whidden comes back.

That is all.

-HECK!

I will join you in this. I'll start the pestering immediately.

Somehow, the pestering reached Sandy June and she sent me an email.

I have returned. I miss you folks, it's true.

I have become very old, very drunk, and very lazy. Posting is rare for me these days, but I SHALL ENDEAVOR to PERSEVERE to PREVAIL against the evil of the night, and return to this forum of goodness and light.

==Whidden

Whidden wrote:

Somehow, the pestering reached Sandy June and she sent me an email.

That would be my doing  

Welcome back, Whidden!

Hey there Pippin, I got a question. I recall you took a trip to Europe and didn't care for it that much.

I took a trip to Israel two weeks ago, and it was brutally hard. Lot's of airplane, lot's of bus time, lot's of heat. First 3 days were utter hell. I was thinking about how you were not happy with the Europe thread in some thread, and that I was going through the same thing.

Last two days was pretty sweet. Got to see a lot of coolness. After I got back, I was very glad to be home. Now two weeks later, I have found all my memories of horror and stress of the trip are gone, and I remember only the good parts.

Did you experience the same thing, did time dull the crappiness of the trip and leave you with just the cool things you saw?

Hmm, hard to say... Part of the crappiness was from visiting family members that are best experienced in small doses. The parts that were spent away from my aunt and uncle were a mix of good and bad, but I suppose that they have gotten better with time. Some things, like the 9 hour train ride and having to sit in the little gap between the train cars because my brother and I had tickets but not reserved seats, sucked at the time but are just good stories now.

I've never been to anywhere in the Middle East, but I've heard that if you can stand the heat there are some beautiful and historically rich places to see. What did you see when you were there?

I saw lot's of stuff that was cool.

I flew to Minnesota, then Newark. From Newark, I got to see the new New York skyline with the Freedom tower. That was cool. After an 9 hour layover, I spent 11 hours on a plane to Tel Aviv all cramped up between people, then 4 hours on a bus. It was utter hell.

However, cool stuff I got to see:

1. Night time view of Haifa from the hill the hotel was on. I had a view of the shipyards, the Mediterranean Sea, some nuclear power plants. Which sounds weird, but they looked neat the Jews had them lit up with green and blue lights like they were proud of them. The moon was very bright and bloated that night and you could see and hear and smell the whole city. It was surrealistic.

2. I got to eat dinner in Caesarea on the sea. King Herod built a fort there over 2000 years ago, and now they have a restaurant there on the rocks of the shore. Some military helicopters were off shore stopping a ship, and they lowered troops into the water. This lasted about an hour. It was right at sunset and pretty darn cool. We drank a lot of beer and wine, then they ran out beer. So the Americans at my table started complaining about the beer being out and I got to hear the Arab owner curse the United States with some salty language. That was fun to experience.

3. I was on a mountain, and got to see Lebanon in the distance, Syria and Jordan.

4. Saw some Hasidic Jews with the thick cowboy hats and the curled up hair.

5. Saw Bedouins living in caves with goats on the side of mountains.

6. Saw the Dead Sea and Masada, where the Romans invaded and had a siege against the Jews.

7. Saw 7 "lifers", which is what you call a bird you have never seen before when you bird watch. One was a blue rock thrush right in the middle of the desert. Awesome bird.

8. Saw the old city of Jerusalem, The Dome of the Rock, street vendors selling bread, The Church of the Holy sepulchre, and the western wailing wall. I got to go up and touch the wailing wall, which I thought was illegal, but others were doing it and I did it. That was cool.

9. Got to see the Holocaust Museum, which was one of the most beautiful places on earth I have ever seen, the way the landscape and gardening is. The memorials outside were breathtaking. The walk through the actual museum itself was mentally rough, some things I wish I could erase out of my noggin. But it was really a powerful humbling place to visit.

10. Got to see lots of teenagers, boys and girls in the military with guns. It's really a culture shock to see teens with weapons in full military uniform everywhere. Some came through our bus, a black girl from the Gaza Strip and a young Jewish boy, they had automatic rifles of some kind. They were very happy and very kind as they searched the bus for whatever it was they were looking for. In other words, the kids over there are armed and polite.

11. I ate sushi for the first time, as I eat a version of Kosher because of my Seventh Day Adventist like religion, and cant' eat unclean fish. And most of the stuff in sushi is unknowable what it really is. But over there, everything was Kosher and there was no problem, so I ate some sushi and really enjoyed it. A lot better than what I thought it would be.

12. I saw the mountains where they found the dead sea scrolls, the mountains where Moses got to see the promised land.

13. And coolest of all, I got to stand on the mount of Olives. It was nothing like what I thought. I was thinking low hill, super low and super flat, with Texas looking prairie grass on it and some rocks. It was higher than I thought, very steep and looked like a Greek or Italian hill filled with buildings in one of those Oceans' 11 movies. I also went into the bathroom there and it had old style "Loos" from England that looked to be about 100 years old. The flush deal was all weird, ha ha. Hard to describe.

14. I had these two very good looking Jewish women at the airport argue over my suitcase. It was a lot of fun. They were around 19 or 20, and one said I had to go "here", but the other said "there". They got in a big shouting match, and people started to stare. It was very cool. They argue loud over there, it's slick. I just stood there and enjoyed it.

Sounds like a very interesting trip. Lots of things that I would like to see sometime myself. Except the sushi, I could do without trying that  You are braver than me to try it.

The thought of it made me sick forever and ever. I would never try it I thought.

The kosherness of it is what got me. Rawness of it is overblown. It's "cooked" in some kind of mystery marination. They soak it in weird sauces and unknown spices. It does something to the fish that is not quite heat cooking, but something that renders it from being pure out raw fish.

In others words, they cheat. Sushi is the Big Lie of a not quite Klingon humanity.

DAVE!!!!! I miss you in the face dude!

Nymphadora wrote:

DAVE!!!!!  I miss you in the face dude!

Let me catch you up on my life: I'm still a drunk.

All caught up now. You are up to date.    

Also, dogs are doing well. Lot's of Oklahoma storms. Same old, same old.

No fair, I thought I'd chased everybody off this site once and for all...

Foiled again

Man. Will read the rest of this thread soon. Seems like the balance of the universe has been restored.

-HECK!

So Dave can go all the way to the Holy land, yet it takes years to get him online again. Something is out of wack with the universe. I always suspected it would take an act by Heck to get him to return to the fold. :p

Your trip sounds amazing. I'd love to see their holocaust museum and also Schindler's tree.

My life is a total bore. I'm starting my last year before I have my B.A. in history, wooo class of 2014 and am suffering with my last semester of German. No "ich habe ein GroB Kugelschreiber" for you, my friend.

gaboman wrote:

No fair, I thought I'd chased everybody off this site once and for all...

Pippin has Message board Resurrection powers. Don't tell anyone, they will draft her into Professor Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning.

fuscia wrote:

So Dave can go all the way to the Holy land, yet it takes years to get him online again.  Something is out of wack with the universe.  I always suspected it would take an act by Heck to get him to return to the fold.  :p

Your trip sounds amazing.  I'd love to see their holocaust museum and also Schindler's tree.  

My life is a total bore.  I'm starting my last year before I have my B.A. in history, wooo class of 2014 and am suffering with my last semester of German.  No "ich habe ein GroB Kugelschreiber" for you, my friend.

I have a coarse Pen!!!!


The holocaust museum was rough. The art and landscape of it was absolutely Gorgeous. It was at the top of a hill with a lot of pines and they had it landscaped perfectly. Den Ort hätte Sie wirklich genossen. Es war fantastisch. Ich Didn ' t sehen oder merken Shindlers Baum, aber ich erinnere mich an seinen Namen. Sie hatten 3 dimensionale Modelle der Lager. Ich bin wirklich froh, dass ich ging.

Wow, I typed that out in Babelfish, converted it to German. Then put that from German to English and it was almost unreadable.

Whidden wrote:

Pippin has Message board Resurrection powers. Don't tell anyone, they will draft her into Professor Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning.

If I went to the X-Men school I'd be all over Gambit. I'd be like, "Rogue, I think you're cool and all, but you need to step off."

If I went, I'd bring Will Ferrel and we would party that campus OLD SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wolverine tries to stop the party, we bust out some magnets.

Do we need to start a new 'bring Dave back' campaign?

gaboman wrote:

Do we need to start a new 'bring Dave back' campaign?

Did he die or leave? I'm so confused. 

I'm not sure. His Playstation is online but he's not playing a game. That can only mean one thing.

Spoiler: