A bus is a bus, but you could be wrong about that

I think I want my old blog design back, but I don't know how to get it. Google has made things more difficult for me. Is that age? Or is it Google messing around with something when they didn't need to?

In the meantime, I will say that we left Egypt by air, and flew back to Amman, Jordan.

There we boarded a bus so that we could cross into Israel. Which crossing took nearly three hours. We waited on the bus a long time. Eventually, we were allowed to gather our luggage and wait in line to be looked over individually. They're careful.

In Israel we were privileged to occupy Mahmoud's beautiful bus. That'll be the day, I might have said, when I lavish praise on a bus. But this was not just any bus. And we did not simply ride it from here to there for fifteen minutes and be done, ta da. No. We were on that bus a lot. Every day. Get it?

And here it is with a beautiful girl standing by it.

Perhaps you can see it is a Mercedes Benz. What you can't see is that it is spotless, clean, sweet-smelling. And what you don't know, yet, is that Mahmoud is determined to keep it that way.

No ice cream bars on the bus. Only water to drink on the bus. Brush ALL sand from your feet after your dip in the Mediterranean Sea. Put all trash in the plastic bags Mahmoud has placed throughout the bus. And, goes without saying, no smoking.

I heard a grumble or two, but, after all, it is Mahmoud's bus. And we later learned that Mahmoud's bus is what we wanted. But I guess he could not go into Jordan.

I don't know the name of the last driver we had, but I know he smoked. So did Waled, our Jordanian guide who I'd just as soon "kind of" forget, "I'm just trying to tell you." No, they didn't smoke on the bus but right outside the door as soon as we parked. And I can guarantee that our driver had smoked on the bus, like night and day.

And this bus . . . well, it simply did not measure up. To be brief:  It stank. Double what you're thinking here. The windows were dirty. The whole bus was filthy so that you did not want to touch anything. Double what you're thinking again. Gross is a good word for it.

See? Mahmoud knew best. And not every bus is Mahmoud's bus.