What do you do when you arrive at shul as visitors and find that you are the only ones present. Furthermore, it was a particularly grave occasion—Tisha B’Av. To be fair, the Rabbi had hinted to us days earlier in an email that he does not usually achieve a minyan. So what did we do?
We returned to the car, retrieved our chumash and sat on the sidewalk next to the shul entrance under a lamp and recited Eicha (Lamentations). Whether it was the right thing or not it certainly felt meaningful. Earlier in the day, we completed a 7.5 miles hike which was enjoyable but not worth commenting upon. Suffice to say, we were tired and ready to begin the fast.
The excitement in the financial world, which of course affects us all, whether one is directly involved or not, continued unabated today. When the markets calmed (recovered from 450 to 180 down), we left our motel in Flagstaff and headed towards Sedona, a great favorite of ours. We passed by the super Walmart to load up with provisions for the next few days and stopped at the library to purchase books. It is proving to be a useful idea to acquire a number of books and discard them after completion along the way. It also makes us look like real 'intellectuals' on the trails. You see we have a few spare covers such as “Einstein and his theory on relatives”, “1948” and our favorite hiking manual: “The audacity of 'Bush-whacking'”. While reading on the slopes, we wrap our novels in these covers and ‘presto’—don't we look the part!
While at the library, we fired up the laptop expecting to see…we haven’t a clue. As we mentioned, we left when the market was 180 points down after recovering from a negative 450. Well, 520 points down was quite a move—it surprised us a little but we did take the opportunity to do a little buying and selling. We sold our groceries to the librarian at a twenty percent discount and negotiated a better price on the books. We thought we were quite clever until dinner at which time our editor explained we should digest whatever we were reading because that’s supper.
We always look forward to using our timeshare with much enthusiasm especially the part where they try and sell us another one. They presume, probably correctly, one is relaxed and open to spend more freely when on holiday. Of course, they don’t know we are on hike-about, a serious business. After being ‘caught’ before, we have our own strategy to combat these aggressive tactics. We now offer to sell our timeshare unit back to them instead. This creates a bit of a stalemate at which time we ask for our keys and offer words of farewell. Today, we had to resort to Torah tactics as the one employee was quite insistent. ‘We want to pay you $150 to come listen to our proposal,’ she insisted. “It is not permissible to accept an invitation when we have no intention of buying,” we replied.
The pictures give an indication of a quick hike close to dusk in the special town of Sedona. We were so excited to be back on the trails that we raced up to the summit like two happy kids. We turned to each other and said: "We are".
Cheers,
Jenni and Jeffrey
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