JFK airport

JFK airport with beer and playing gin rummy

October 17, 2011 Monday
We woke up about 6:00am and did our last minute packing.
We had some breakfast and then took our garbage to the Allen’s. It seems we
start every trip this way. We left the house around 8:00 am and made it to the
Intercontinental Hotel in Tampa where we parked our car and took the shuttle to
the airport. We had a little problem checking into AA airlines. The auto self
check in did not recognize us and there was not enough staff to deal with us.
However they finally got to us and we checked in. Both of our bags weighed 39
pounds each, well under the limit. I failed the full body scan and had to be
patted down. The flight to JFK was smooth and uneventful.

It has been many years since we left out of JFK. We
remember many years ago when Michael was going to Israel he got on a bus to get
to the El Al terminal and ended up in the long term parking. Lucky for him Jeff
Forger staff member of SPE was on the same bus and saw this 18 year old wearing
an SPE tee shirt. He introduced himself to Michael and got the bus to turn
around and get him to the terminal just in time for his flight.

Today there are no buses, they use an “Air Train”
monorail system. Much easier and straight forward. We arrived to find El Al
closed. When we returned 30 minutes later there was a line of about 25 people.
They had 8 people screening each passenger. We had the head of the security for
our person. He asked many questions. Why are we going to Israel, who were we
going to see, where do they live, what mission are you going on, what is the
Federation of Sarasota-Manatee, do you belong to a synagogue, what’s it’s name,
what is the last Jewish holiday ( we knew the answer Sukkot), what 4 items do
you use on Sukkot ( we knew 2 of the 4 he helped us with the others), then the
typical questions about our baggage, packing and meeting strangers. We then
went through security with no problems. We have a few hours to wait for our
flight, thus the long entry.

To pass the time we had a beer, chips, salsa and played some gin rummy.