The Military March to Ordination

It was like a military operation.

The planning had already been done. We sent out evites. We had three events to plan: (1) The Supper/Havdalah, held on Pam's house on Saturday night, May 17th. The menu, strictly vegetarian, was catered. And the small service where we give Ruth our blessings had to be planned...in Ruth's head. (2) The ordination itself. Not so much planning here for the ordination, but how to get 30+ people to it, and then to the next event. The result was the minibus. (3) The ordination celebration, right after the ordination meet-and-greet, to take place at Temple Israel in Hollywood. As it turned out, Ruth's classmate Ann would take charge and plan everything, which we really appreciated.

So, we all flew in or caravanned into Westchester. There were about 15 of us staying at the Custom Hotel, and I wanted to get down there on Friday afternoon so that I could grab all the room keys (before somebody else did), and check to see if there were any problems. Those who booked on their own registered at the front desk on their own, but we had 6 rooms because we had all those single boys arriving, and I wanted control over how I paired them. We're talking about: James, Aaron, Ehren, Josh, Zach, Chris, Josh, Andrew, Rick (and maybe Joel), Evan (and girlfriend).

In the meantime, we had some logistical "issues" as to how some of them arrived. One was flying into Ontario, an airport on the other side of Palm Springs. One was flying into Long Beach airport, a good hour away from our hotel near LAX. One was taking the Amtrak train to downtown L.A. We got a car service for Ontario, and paid up front; we talked Long Beach into taking a shuttle directly to the hotel; and Mr. Amtrak figured out how to take the bus to LAX, then the hotel shuttle to the hotel. Needless to say, I had a spreadhsheet with all of this data on it, along with the arrival times for those flying into LAX. I had given the latter info to the Custom Hotel so that they could have the shuttle ready.

I must say that the Custom Hotel did a splendid job on the day of arrival as well as the day of departure. We had had some problems with them before in setting up the reservations, problems I ascribe to (1) it being a new hotel, and (2) the agent we dealt with disappeared early due to a family emergency. Still, even though some of the events were irritating (e.g., those wishing a reservation couldn't call the 1-800 number, but had to make a long-distance call and speak directly with one of the sales reps), they were surmountable.

I spent a lot of time on Friday afternoon giving them info about the group, sitting down in the lobby and writing out who was in which room for the single guys, and this paid off when Ehren arrived late Saturday night. Ehren was Mr. Ontario, and was flying in from London, all jet-lagged and bleary-eyed. When he couldn't find us (no cell phone), he went to the front desk, and they gave him a key to his room. In addition, when Ehren had to stay an extra night, they didn't screw that up as other hotels have (ask Rick about that).

I had called Joe, the USA Bus Charter guy, four days prior, making sure we had a bus ready. Joe was the guy who, when I said I already had a bus chartered, called me back to tell me that that other company was quite unreliable, and told me some horror stories. Since I hadn't actually booked with them, I went with Joe's company, because the one thing I was worried about was reliability. If the bus doesn't show up at the Custom Hotel at 8:30 on Sunday morning, we're screwed. There is no other way to transport over 30 people to the Wilshire synagogue. He assured me my bus was reserved, and even gave me the phone number of the dispatcher.

I had too much to do on Sunday morning. Go out to breakfast (early: 6:30) at the bowling alley, get dressed in my suit, take all the luggage down to the car, check out of 6 rooms after I made sure everyone was out of them, and make sure the bus was coming.

I called the dispatcher, named Abraham, at 8 am, in time, I thought, to make sure the bus was there by 8:30. He sleepily answered the phone and said that, yes, he was Abraham, but he didn't have anything to do with me. Call Jimmy. Jimmy was our driver, he said, and gave me Jimmy's phone number.

This is when I thought, like Indiana Jones, I have a bad feeling about this. I called Jimmy, woke him up, and Jimmy told me he wasn't working today.

Panic started to set in. I took all the luggage downstairs with Rick's help, checked out of the rooms, dialing the USA Bus general phone number as I went. Finally, I got a choice that said, "in case of emergency.."

This was my emergency.

I got someone in the flesh, who told me, "Hold on, please..." and put me on hold for 5 minutes. Then she came back on, announced that she was the answering service, but took my name, phone number, and contact (Joe) info and told me someone would call me back. Five minutes later Joe called. It was 8:15.

He listened to all my information in my increasingly urgent voice, and said quickly that he'd call me back. He called me back 5 minutes later to tell me he was working on it and would again call me back. At 8:40 he called me back to say, "Ken is there at the hotel."

Well, if he was, he wasn't in the lobby or the valet parking driveway, or even out front near the Ralph's store. But finally we found him and he pulled his minivan around into the alleyway so that everyone could get on it. It was Ken's day off, or at least it was.

At that point I found out that about seven of our people had decided not to take the minibus after all, preferring to drive in either their own car or someone else's.

So the minibus was half-full. That was okay. However, when Ken asked me, "Do you know where we're going?", I began to have that sinking stomach feeling again.

But in my notebook were mapquest pages of where we were to go each step of the way. I tore the first one out and handed it to him after saying, "No. That's why we hired a driver."

He got us there in plenty of time, and parked around the corner from Wilshire temple in the "3-minute Parking" zone. Don't you know he was there when we got back. Thank God.

At the end of the rather lengthy ordination ceremony, a couple of us stepped over the throng to get into the side garden to greet the new rabbi. Most of our people stayed out in the Wilshire synagogue parking lot, where there were shade trees. Some of the men were losing some of their clothing.

After a little while, the happy new rabbi and our bus people climbed back onboard and went to the next synagogue for the party. Ken found the way through surface streets, parked, and we went inside. We were so early we had to wait for it to open at 2 pm, but in the meantime, took lots of photos of everyone, including Rabbi Chester and Dr. Adler, both of whom stopped by.

By the time we returned to the Custom Hotel, I could breathe a sigh of relief. I thanked Ken for his service, and then changed clothes. We made sure Ehren got his extra night in the hotel, said goodbye to those who were flying or driving out that night, and the remaining 11 of us got together to discuss the plan for Sunday night.

After all, this wasn't the end. There was one more piece to this operation: the trip to Disneyland! We all climbed into three cars (belonging to me, Jamie, and Andrew), threw our luggage in Andrew's truck (thank you, Andrew!), and caravanned to Anaheim, the place where I could relax after this monumental day. Let the fun begin!

(Thanks to those who took photos: Cynthia Asprodites, Rick Burnett)