A little before 8:00 a.m., I set out walking down to a point near the library. The reason was that there was a big Open House today at the Ovda Airbase, and free shuttle buses to get there! At first, we were all a bit alarmed, because there were only 2 buses, and obviously more people than could fit in them. But a man assured us that more were on the way, and, sure enough, in a few minutes 3 or 4 more showed up.
I was quite excited to be getting out of town a bit and to be riding as a passenger on highway 12 (instead of being the driver), especially in the elevated position of a tour bus. Naturally, I snapped a lot of pictures. I sat on the left side of the bus in both directions, so on the way up a lot of my pics were actually of Egypt, since the road runs quite close to the border (sometimes, in fact, RIGHT next to it!) for about half the trip.
When we arrived at the base, we got off the bus and went through security. We also had to show them our national ID card (te'udat zehut). Then there were more buses to take us the rest of the distance (less than a kilometer, I think) to the terminal area (the base also serves as a civilian international airport).
The celebrations were all in the area near the civilian terminal, but there were plenty of displays of ground vehicle, firefighting equipment, fighter jets and a couple of other airplanes, several helicopters, 2 anti-missile defense systems (the Patriot and Iron Dome), and miscellaneous other things, including a jet engine. I had a hard time deciding on today's pic of the day, but I finally decided on this shot of the row of jets:
There were 3 large, white canopies set up for shade. Under one of them there was a stage and chairs for the audience. At one point, a band of air force soldiers played for us. It consisted of a percussion player, an electric guitarist, a electric bass guitarist, a keyboard player, and 2 singers (one male and one female). They were all very good and worked well together, too. I was particularly impressed with the singers and the keyboard player, partly because I'm a keyboard player myself, and partly (okay, MOSTLY!) because he was very cute! LOL
Under the second canopy, there were several tables set up with chairs around them where there were crafts for the kids. Of course, there were LOTS of kids everywhere!
The 3rd canopy was the food tent. I didn't get anything, but there was obviously quite a lot available. I had put two liter-and-half bottles of water in the freezer last night and brought them with me in a pack (that was ALL that was in the pack, except for paper towels on the bottom and wrapped around them to absorb some of the condensation). I actually ended up drinking only one of them, but I did drink all of it.
I really enjoyed myself. First, I checked out all the displays, then I watched the concert, then I mostly just sat under one of the canopies and relaxed. I think I stayed out of the sun enough to avoid sunburn, but I guess I'll only know for sure tomorrow. In any case, if I did burn, it was too mild for me to even notice yet. That's pretty good, considering that I wore a tank top and shorts, NO hat (I HATE hats; they make my head hot!), and NO sunscreen. Of course, I do have a pretty formidable base tan, if I say so myself!
When we got back to Eilat, I was hoping they would let us get off at the top instead of riding into town, and, sure enough, several people asked them to, and they did. So I only had to walk home from the highway 12 kikar, a much shorter and easier walk. This was especially nice in the middle of the day, when there's not nearly as much shade.
After lunch at home (weenies wrapped in tortillas and a big salad with 2 tomatoes), I watched lecture videos for the second week of my class in regression (part of the machine learning sequence).
In the early evening, after the sun was gone but before it got dark, I went out for a medium-length walk, taking 3 more pictures, all views toward the Jordanian mountains on the other side of the valley, still lit by the setting sun.
You can see more pics of my trip up, of the displays at the base, and of the trip back, on Facebook.
I walked a total of 7.93 kilometers today.
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