I just flew in to Ithaca - and, boy are, my arms tired!

Highlights of our flight:

• 747-400 filled with 2 groups of teenagers: one group American, on the way back from summer camp in Israel, the second Israeli, on the way to the US for summer camp
• Bad weather in NY caused a backup of landings at JFK. 41 planes waiting in the air.
• Ours didn't have enough fuel to wait that long in the air, so we flew to Hartford CT, to re-fuel at Bradley Airport.
  Notice: the word International is not in the airports name. ie - we were not allowed to get off the plane.
• It started to rain in Hartford. Apparently, you don't fuel airplanes during lightning storms. We waited for the storm to pass.
  
• Remember those kids? Instead of dimming the lights (Israel time was around 2300), the crew decided to give them fruit juice.
• We made it out of the terminal at JFK at around 8 pm local time, and headed for the car rental agency, only to discover a line about 10 people long. We got the car just before 11 pm.

We started driving, Ithaca bound. We new we had no intentions to make it all the way, but at least get started, and find a motel on the way. A bit before the Poconos we felt like there was no more driving in us. We headed into a town, and there it was: a "Whole Foods" parking lot just before us, and the motel nowhere in sight. Can you guess what we did?

Yes - we slept in the car.

It really wasn't that bad. I mean, because of the problems at Budget, they gave us an SUV, so there was plenty of room. And we had pillows and a blanket that Uri carried on board from home (in a vacuum sealed bag, the sized reduced by like 50%, very cool).
The sun woke us up at 5:30 am. Or, more precisely, it woke Tamar up at 4:00 am, and she managed to go back to sleep, but my the time 5:00 rolled around, there was no more of that. She started to move the car in the lot, to see when the supermarket opens, Uri woke up and we hit the road.

We ate breakfast at a cute diner, got our first taste of the US when, together, we couldn't finish one order of pancakes, and continued. We made it into Ithaca at around 10 am.
More about that next time.