Okay, people!

I have noticed a rather startling trend on this blog. That is to say, nearly 100%of the posts written in the month of January on this blog have been by male members of this blog - the female side of the equation has been woefully underrepresented. Now, I'm not exactly sure why that is, but it's time to change it up a little here at SerandEz.

One of the more clever ideas (or so I thought) that I had in my life was that traffic lights should indicate a few seconds before they switch from red to green that when they will actually make this switch, drivers will be prepared. Well, when I got to Israel for the first time, I discovered that in Israel, the traffic light shone a bright yellow in addition to red to let drivers know when the light was about to turn green. Yes! This was *brilliance*!

Okay, maybe not so much after all though, because this meant that taxi drivers had an unfortunate tendency to start revving up the engine at that point so that as soon as the light turned green they would shoot across traffic, sending passengers pinging around the backseat like so many bouncy balls. Forward! Backwards! Rightwards! Leftwards! Upwards!

Such was the fate of the Apple as her taxi driver careened his way from Rechavia to Har Nof one chilly night in Yerushalayim.

Then there was the five minute stretch where I *thought* the end might be near as the driver wove in and out of lanes, sort of like the way that I drive when playing one of those arcade racing games when the car veers up the sides of the barrier and trundles its way across the grass in the middle of the racing track.

Then there were the last-minute screeches to a stop when the light turned red with the cab halfway into the lane of oncoming traffic.

Then there were the points where the driver felt the need to go fifty miles an hour in twenty-five mph zones.

But still . . . nothing compares to harrowing, death-defying cab rides in the Holyland. Not even harrowing, death-defying cab rides in New York City. Just the fact that you know that the driver is burning rubber on holy soil (okay, tar, whatever) is enough to make you forgive him for endangering your life and charging you more money on the meter. Knowing that that taxi driver is enabling you to see the sites of the holiest city on Earth (even while making you consider throwing up on his backseat so that he'll have an incentive to slow down) is enough to make you pause and thank G-d that you have the opportunity to visit the palterin shel melech, His Palace.

Israel is a holy, holy place. Traffic and taxi idiosyncrasies and all.

We all need to be there.

We need to go home.