Heading to Israel

I'm off to Israel with nine other bloggers, where we'll listen to and interview visionaries in technology, social media, renewable energy and the arts. Everything will be captured here, but all of our blog posts will be aggregated to a central site to be announced soon.

I chose a picture of Haifa's port because it was here where I landed by ship on my very first trip to Israel now more than twenty years ago. I was traveling alone, very young (still a teenager), wore a small backpack and landed without a map, guidebook or clue where I was going. I had no plans, other than to hitch north to south and back again.

When I would depart was also unknown, as exploration and adventure were the only two words I knew at the time. It was a time when I knew few boundaries and the world was unlimited. A main goal was to meet as many people who were "not like me or my culture" as possible.

Haifa has a long history and its even more evident when you land by ship at dawn. It has been a refuge for mariners since prehistoric times. My recollection of it was "dusty" and "industrial."

I wrote in a diary at the time, now a beaten up cardboard notebook with faded international flags, "my first view of Israel was of Haifa's dusty port. It was not quite 5 am. Fog and mist surrounded our ship and it grew even hazier as we got closer to dock. A sprawling industrial place. Army soldiers everywhere.......on boats passing by us, even more upon landing. Surreal. As if it were all a dream and we had turned back the hands of time by a century."

That was 1985.

This trip is largely business but I do plan on returning to a few old haunts, if they still exist or I can find them by retracing my scribbled notes from so many years ago. More from the road.