The Summer 2001 Begins

Mark and Debbie celebrated their 28th wedding anniversary in an unusual manner.

Out of the house by 6:00 am.

The offi­cial leav­ing home pose at the front door:

Avigail & Noam at 13043

Avi­gail & Noam at the front door of 13043 Edi­na Way, Poway

We start­ed by tak­ing Avi­gail to Ontario air­port (for an 8:00 am flight) from where she flew to Wash­ing­ton, DC to work as an intern in Machon Kaplan at the Reform move­men­t’s Reli­gious Action Cen­ter.

Togeth­er at Ontario Airport:

Noam Debbie Avigail & Mark

Noam, Deb­bie, Avi­gail & Mark at the Ontario Airport

There she lived in the Fran­cis Scott Key dorms at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty and stud­ied three hours every day (two dif­fer­ent class­es — three weeks on con­flicts fac­ing the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in the 20th cen­tu­ry and an addi­tion­al three weeks on Jew­ish issues in con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture) and worked every after­noon at Amer­i­cans Unit­ed for Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State. She was lucky to be there just as the “Faith Based Ini­tia­tive” rolled into high gear. Our own Randy “Duke” Cun­ning­ham got a call from me, but vot­ed for it any­way. Avi­gail had a chance to see (meet?) John McCain, but not her Poway High School gov­ern­ment teacher’s favorite Strom Thur­mond. She made a lot of calls, sent a lot of thank you let­ters and even wrote some releas­es that I got in my reg­u­lar email.

Deb­bie, Noam and Mark then con­tin­ued on to Mon­terey for the CCAR convention.

The dri­ve up was thank­ful­ly unevent­ful. Though this was part­ly (we imag­ine) because the choice of vehi­cles to rent was rather com­plex. We need­ed a vehi­cle that could car­ry the four of us with enough lug­gage space to take an iMac, Avi­gail’s lug­gage for six weeks, Noam’s lug­gage for four weeks and our lug­gage for two weeks. It soon became obvi­ous that a medi­um sized car would not suf­fice. I was able to rent a Ford Explor­er which would have the space, but, when Deb­bie learned what mod­el we were all going to pile into, she nixed the idea. The rental peo­ple promised me some­thing dif­fer­ent, though com­pa­ra­ble instead and we slept more rest­ful­ly know­ing we were not in line for a roll-over, even though the tires had been changed. I even arranged to pick up the vehi­cle a day ear­ly to guar­an­tee that I would not get an Explor­er. So, I was a bit sur­prised to get a call from the rental com­pa­ny, at about noon the day of the pick­up, that they had been van­dal­ized the night before an the vehi­cle I had been promised was dam­aged — and that all they had left was a top of the line Explor­er. Not much to do, but I did not want to dri­ve that all the way to Mon­terey. so I called the Ontario office and arranged for a trade. I’d drop off the Explor­er and turn it in for a small­er (medi­um size) car which would be all we’d need from there north. We were star­tled to learn that the “best” they could offer at the agreed-upon price was a white Lin­coln Continental

And so, we drove up the coast in style

Mark, Noam & Debbie

Mark, Noam & Deb­bie pos­ing with the fan­cy rental car

We arrived at Mon­terey and Mark quick­ly trad­ed in the Con­ti­nen­tal for a sim­ple car that would hold us for the next two weeks. First at the Con­ven­tion and then at camp.

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