SWCAMBORNE

It is roughly 660 miles from Ashland, Oregon to Pasadena, California and I am proof that you can easily drive it in a day. Even on an overcast day driving pretty hard there is plenty to see.

Mt Shasta

Sunset over the San Joaquin Valley

and plenty of Starbucks

See more photos on Flickr

A special shout out to Miles one of the brilliant staff at Valley View Auto Repair in Ashland, Oregon who against all odds replaced the clutch in Rebecca’s car and made my drive both possible and necessary.  Well done.

On the drive the mini went over 90,000 miles and this was its first new clutch.  I took a picture.

We are going to the UK in March and Lillian and Rebecca got in a few practice calls:

Life is Good

Happy New Year to one and all

Our Israel trip with Dennis Prager was one of the highlights of this year.

Here are links to:

• the flickr album of photos I posted about the trip.
• My other blog posts related to the trip
• Dennis Prager’s web site where you can learn about his future trip

We had a great trip to Israel and I finally got the album posted on Flickr.
For those of you who aren’t interested enough to see all 100 pictures here are three of my favorites:

The Roman Aqueduct at Caesarea.

The Bahai Temple in Haifa

Nurit and I near the old city of Jerusalem wall at sunset.

What a lucky man I am.

“In Canadian Schools, unlike in the United States, they teach a class called “Moral and Religious Education.”

Quote is from Rachel Korazim a holocaust educator who spoke to our Israel Tour group in preparation for our visit to Yad Vashem.  The newly rebuilt Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.  Her talk was brilliant and the memorial is a gut wrenching emotional experience.

Superlatives are claims to the highest, fastest, largest, oldest etc.

We have had a joke for many years about a Bronze Buddha.  If you define the group sharply enough anything is the best at something.  I am “Pasadena’s oldest man born in Coventry, England who had a factory in Mexico.

On our recent trip to Israel we noticed that most superlatives about spiritual things don’t work with the “est” suffix.  You have to use “most”.  For instance “most spiritual” is correct not “spiritualest”.  “Jewishest” is wrong “most Jewish” is right.

By the way who is the worlds most spiritual man? Hint: see picture above.

We had dinner with Nurit’s Aunt and her family last night. Excellent time at Uri in Acco.

We toured around Tel Aviv yesterday it is a big city with all of the big city stuff. Graffiti and protests against the high cost of everything including housing.

The stories of the founding of the city and the war of independence are fascinating. Today we are off to Casearea for some of the ancient stuff. Just in the nick of time. I’m not a fan of modern cities.

We are on the Dennis Prager listening tour in Israel for a week or so and it has started very well. One of the benefits of the tour is that it is made up of people who self selected because they agree with Prager’s conservative values and support of a strong Israel. They are also people who will afford to make a trip like this. About 75% are Christians which surprised and delighted us.

Today we saw an museum that was a clandestine ammunition factory during the war of independence. We even met one of the workers from the factory. She is now a lovely smiling grey haired woman. What a treat.

Tel Aviv is a beautiful beach front city.

Many pictures here are a few

We are still looking for the perfect painting of the Golden Hills of California.  In the meantime I’m taking some more pictures as we travel around.  Soon you’ll see this batch as mastheads on the blog.

I took these while we were puttering back from a trip to Sausalito to attend a wedding.  I only took a few pictures in Sausalito because the entire time we were there it was cloudy and cold.  The wedding was a really wonderful and joyful event but I forgotten how cold the Northern California Coast is in the Summer.  But the foothills inland from South of Carmel to San Luis Obisbo were warm, sunny and beautiful.

Life is Good