Check out my blog from yesterday for more photos!

On those mornings when I’ve only been afforded two hours of sleep, the first thing I attempt, when the alarm goes off, is problem solving; there must be some way I can accomplish everything I need to accomplish, yet stay in this bed for at least another hour. Therefore, on a morning like this, I fail at my first task of the day.

On this particular morning, I needed to meet my cameraman, Chris Jackson, at our office in Jerusalem, load up the gear, get through the stringent security at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv and fly to Amman, Jordan to begin the ground trek to Beirut. The difficulty in making the trip points out the cantankerous folly of man. As the missile flies, the trip from Jerusalem to Beirut would take about 5 hours by car. With Rafiq Hariri international airport in Beirut shut down by Hezbollah, a long series of border crossings and paranoid customs inspectors ahead of me, I was ambitiously betting on 18 hours.

So, we hooked up with a driver in Amman and headed for the Syrian border. At the crossing I found many of my contemporaries in the foreign press, the BBC, Canadian Broadcast Company, Swedish radio and a handful of newspaper reporters. Since I was the only one in the bunch who speaks Arabic, I ended up the translator. It still took hours to get visas and get through customs. It’s Ironic that the Syrians made the border so time-consuming; none of us had any interest in Syria. All we wanted was to cross over Syrian land and get to Lebanon where Hezbollah was making swift work of dominating the forces loyal to the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

Word was out that a roadblock of burning tires had severed the road, connecting Damascus to Beirut. So, our plan was to drive all the way around to the North of Lebanon, cross the border there and drive down through Tripoli. But the drivers, through their remarkable cell-phone, buddy network, passed word that the road through Tripoli had been blocked as well. We changed our plan and crossed into Lebanon between Damascus and Beirut.

Before we got to the Lebanese passport control, we could see the black smoke of burning tires rising up from the roadblock. Our driver could not take us any further, so Chris and I had to hand carry the gear. The job was made easier by the eager hands of young Lebanese boys who were more than happy to snatch up our gear and carry it around the roadblock in exchange for a buck or two. The gear was snatched up so quickly (and without us asking for help) my immediate concern was that gear would walk away in the chaos. Chris and I ran alongside trying to keep track of each piece. In the end the kids were honest. They were happy to get a dollar and all our gear arrived at the car.

On the other side of the road block there was a man dispatching Taxis. I haggled a deal and for $100 US, his driver would take our gear and us from the border to Beirut.

Our driver was a man who looked more like a bull than any I’d ever seen. He was far too big to be comfortable in the little Mercedes taxi we had overloaded with TV gear. At one point, I handed him my blackberry so he could speak with a contact in Beirut to get directions to our hotel. His meaty hands and fingers that looked like bratwurst with calluses swallowed up the phone. I sat in the back seat and I could sea a lump of flesh balled up just below his baldhead that looked like a serving of haggis with razor stubble on it. Calluses on his forehead perfected his bull-like appearance. Some of the Muslim faithful develop a single dark spot where their foreheads touch the ground during prayer. Our driver however, had two. They were heavy they stuck out like little horns from his thick forehead.

We reached a little mountain town on the edge of the Bekaa valley and our driver pulled into a parking lot where another cab was waiting. Without explaining what he was doing, he just started unloading our gear from the cab. I asked him what was up and he explained that we were switching cabs. He doesn’t go all the way to Beirut. “Fine,” I told him in Arabic. “But we agreed $100. So, you’ll each get $50.”

He responded, “Then, You’ll stay here.”

It was the perfect scam. Beating him up wasn’t an option and I’m sure he could spot the journos in a hurry. We wanted to get to the story, and didn’t have time to argue. As far as getting ripped-off goes, it was a kinder gentler sort of robbery.

I said something nasty to him, but I said it in English then paid the $200.

We made it to Beirut with all our gear and had a pretty successful week. The story is fascinating there. There are a multitude of forces at work in Lebanon. The tension could grind on for a while; it could flare up. I’m betting that I’ll be back on the air reporting from Lebanon soon enough.