Fat Man/Fit Town

Now that I’m back in Boulder and mostly recovered from jet lag, I need to finish journaling the last two days of our trip.

Friday, we started out a little late in the morning. Our friend Hillary, who took a lot of the photos on the ride and helped with guiding and organizing, is actually a licensed tour guide. Apparently, this is a thing in Israel, the licensing of tour guides. Anyway, after the ride, Hillary was contracted to guide a group from the Jesse White Tumbling Team from Chicago. After checking with them, she allowed us to tag along for part of their tour of the Old City. We thought this would be good, since the Old City is a lot like a living museum with very few explanatory labels on the Very Important Bits. We met up with them by the Damascus Gate in the late morning, from which we intended to proceed to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Interesting fact, Orthodox Easter is not at all the same date as Roman Catholic/Protestant Easter. Yep, it was Good Friday for the Eastern Rite churches, and a decent chunk of the Old City was closed off with crowd control checkpoints. No way to get near the Church with a group of our size. We walked along the city wall to the Jaffa Gate, chatting with Jesse White, the founder of the organization and the current Illinois Secretary of State, some of the troupe members, and their armed guard. That last bit was weird. I assume his presence was thought necessary because Mr. White is a government official, but maybe every tour gets a bodyguard–part of the ambiance of the Middle East.

We went inside the Jaffa Gate for a little shopping. I negotiated extremely badly for a gift for my lovely wife. Properly fleeced, we followed the tumblers to the nearby Mamilla pedestrian mall, which is upscale like Pearl Street in Boulder, with a Crocs store like Pearl Street in Boulder. Here we were able to see the tumblers do a performance in the mall’s little outdoor amphitheater. I couldn’t really follow the action, but by the audience reaction, it was quite the show.

We said good-bye to Hillary and the troupe, and decided to check out Jerusalem’s big, old market hall, Machane Yehuda. On the way, we ran into Cliff, one of the other Ramah riders, and his cousin (it’s a very small country), who were also headed there. I’ve been in a lot of market halls in the US: Emeryville, SF Ferry Building, Quincy Market in Boston, Pike Place in Seattle, and others. They are to Machane Yehuda what EPCOT Center is to international travel. It was hot, crowded, loud and frantic with the approach of Shabbat (we were warned that Friday afternoon could be a little crazy–oh, yeah). We tried coffee flavored halvah. Bought some. Got some of the cheapest and best rugelach I’ve ever had, still warm from the oven. Bought loose tea for Eliana’s souvenir (pomegranate and Bedouin). My kind of place.

Back to the hotel for a little break (more Goldstar!) before Shabbat. I had contacted our friends Rachel and Danny, who lived in Boulder for a few years back in the early aughts, and we were excited to be having Shabbat dinner with them. We met Danny at Shira Hadasha, where they pray, for Kabbalat Shabbat services. The synagogue is Orthodox, in that the men and women are separated, but about as egalitarian as possible within that limitation. As far as I can tell, the only real restriction on female participation there is that they do not lead the required portions of the service. They did lead the kabbalat shabbat psalms, and Danny told us that women read and are called to the Torah during morning services. The service we attended was crowded, lively, and the singing was, frankly, some of the most beautiful I’ve ever heard in shul. It was so good that even I was having an easy time staying in key (I’m pretty sure…no one shushed me, anyway). Nice to see Orthodoxy without misogyny (and with decent musicality).

We walked with Danny back to their apartment, where we were met by Rachel, their two daughters (who are close in age to my kids), and Danny’s mother. Their sons, who were just boys when they lived in Boulder, are now young men out of the house, one away at college, the other a tank commander in the IDF (I was at his bar mitzvah just yesterday, I’m quite sure). Dinner was delicious, and I very much enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with old friends. Can’t wait to get back to Jerusalem to see them again.

We went to bed very late Wednesday night, but we had made a commitment to our new friend from the ride, Lorraine, to attend morning services at her synagogue, just across the street from our hotel. So, up around 6AM. Again. The congregation is located at the Masorti Center, and is primarily made up of Conservative Jews from the States. Thursday is a Torah reading day, and I was honored with an aliyah, my first in Israel, which was lovely of them. It was also the first time Derek had seen me in full Jew-niform–talit and t’fillin–so that seemed to be interesting to him.

After services and breakfast, we met with Dennis Allon from the Israel Guide Dog Center, which hosts Ken Velo, the group that rented us the tandem. Dennis pointed out a little of the history around our hotel, including the complex where the pre-state “government” like the Jewish Agency and Keren Kayemet (JNF) were (and still are) located. We sat down at a cafe, and we chatted a little about the work of the Center. Nice man. Next time in Israel, I will try to visit and see the puppies.

Off to the Israel Museum. We went to the Shrine of the Book, home of the Dead Sea Scrolls, to see some of the oldest copies of Biblical texts. The highlight of the main part of the museum, for me, was the Herod the Great exhibit. It contains a lot of very heavy parts of some of the palaces Herod made, and includes his tomb from Herodion. We were told that the building required quite a bit of reinforcement. Big pieces of stone. I believe it.

In the afternoon, we finally headed for the Old City. Entering the Zion Gate, we finally found a stand to get a felafel sandwich, our first since arriving in Israel. Two things I have not had in a felafel sandwich in the States: pickles and french fries. Odd. Delicious.

Some people plan their walk around the Old City. Not us. So we wandered around a bit…Ok, Derek wandered, I followed. We came across the Corta, the Byzantine-era central road of the Old City. It is partially lined with the original, excavated columns. We followed the Corta through the Jewish Quarter into the Muslim Quarter, where it became older, narrower, and busier. Derek led us up some steps at one point, which caused a child behind us to yell (in Hebrew): “No, no, no! That’s my house!” Oops. Later we came to some other steps, where an Arab man yelled that it was closed. Huh? THE FREAKING TEMPLE MOUNT. Oops again. He pointed us in another direction, and we finally came to the Wester Wall (HaKotel). This is the holiest location in Judaism. I was…unmoved. The noise, the tourists, and the many, many soldiers with very, very big guns detracted somewhat from the feeling that this was a holy place.

We moved on out the south end of the plaza, and quite accidentally found the steps up to the ramparts of the city wall. Good views over the Temple Mount/Kotel area and into other parts of the city. We climbed blocky stone stairs and gradually seemed to be quite high above the street, then kept climbing and were eventually back at street level. A city built on hills can be somewhat unintuitive.

Back to the hotel for a break, and then to Ben Yehuda Street, a very busy pedestrian mall. We were about twice the average age, but the scene was still interesting, in an anthropological way. We went to a shwarma place for dinner. I liked it. Derek was unimpressed.

Go to the desert, of course.

Wednesday morning, we have a reservation for a tour of Masada and the Dead Sea. In retrospect, I booked the wrong tour for us. I should have known it was the wrong tour, because it was scheduled to leave Jerusalem after 9AM. Masada and the Dead Sea are in the Judean Desert, which is hot. If you want to go and be at all comfortable, you go to Masada at dawn or before, and walk up the Snake Path. Instead we went in an 18 passenger van, full, with poor air conditioning. Two-thirds of the passengers did not speak English. Turns out to be a bilingual tour, Spanish and English. So at most half the information can be conveyed as a monolingual tour, since everything needs to be said twice. Oh, also, some of the passengers speak neither English nor Spanish–there’s a young Japanese woman with very limited English, and two French women, only one of whom speaks Spanish (and a little English) who is simultaneously translating for the other one, which is not distracting at all. I and the woman from New Zealand are, I think, the only Jews in this group, which I suppose was fair for Derek, considering the whole previous week.

Anyway, the tour was too commercial by half. We stopped at the Ahava cosmetics factory store by the Dead Sea, where the tour guide assured us of the miraculous powers of the skin treatments, and where we paid scurrilously high prices for iced coffee drinks.

On to Masada. We should have brought our ride water bottles, since bottled water was at least 3 times the price as in the city. Here we rode up in the cable car and had a very rushed hour of seeing the ruins. His information was fine, but just too little, too fast. Back down to the visitor center for lunch, where we get coupons for free bottles of water with a purchased lunch, which we skipped.

Now to a beach at the Dead Sea. Neither of us wanted to go in, but we sat in a shaded hut and watched people on the beach slathering themselves in mud and getting in the water. A forbidding environment, full of Russians. We moved back up to the snack area and got beers, which were cold and therefore good, and sat with the Kiwi, an Australian, and the Japanese woman. I practiced by 10 words of Japanese, for which she was politely (but I have no idea how sincerely) impressed.

Back in Jerusalem, we met up with Bruce Shaffer, who made aliyah just last week from Boulder, for a lovely dinner in a quiet neighborhood restaurant with garden patio tables. The couple who owned the place were extremely nice, and the pumpkin soup was terrific. Bruce was thrilled when the husband identified him as a Jerusalemite and us as tourists. Considering the short time since his official immigration, this gave him quite the boost. Afterwards, he took us on a little walking tour of the neighborhood around Gan HaPaamon (Liberty Bell Park). In the park, we saw the basketball courts where young haredi men were playing against secular teams. Very local slice of life. We also chatted with a woman who was waiting for a cab on one of the residential streets, for no reason except that she said hello. She was unusually bold in her conversational style, asking me right away if I was blind. I have no problem at all with open questions like that, and told her yes, at which point she took a conversational left turn and asked if I played music. Apparently, she thinks blind people are all musicians. Talking to strangers is so entertaining–I really should do it more often. Bruce gave her a hug when she also thought he was a local, and when he told her that he was newly immigrated, she told him to look her up with my favorite sentence of the trip: “My name is Yael Shwartz, spelled with one vav.” That just made me smile.

Tuesday morning we have some free time in Eilat, so we head to a marine reserve a few blocks from the hotel (and a few blocks closer to Egypt), so Derek can snorkel with some of our fellow riders. I hang out on the beach and piers with Triss and Rachael from the Chai Rollers, wading in a bit to enjoy the relatively cool Red Sea water.

Our bus to Jerusalem leaves pretty much on time at 1PM, and we head north much faster than we headed south. We stop for glida (ice cream) at Israel largest dairy, Tnuva, just a little south of Kibbutz Ketura. I asked the counterman for a flavor I don’t see at home: date honey and yogurt. I ask for a small, and he wants to know what other flavor I want, since a small is 2 flavors. He has a children’s size, but insists it is too small for me. So I add mango. I am now spoiled forever. I want to go back.

We make another quick stop at the Dead Sea. We’ve now done all three: Med, Red and Dead as part of the trip. Expensive Dead Sea cosmetic products at the store. Lots of Russian speakers everywhere. Hot. We’ll be back tomorrow.

We arrive in Jerusalem around 6. Since we’ve just spent a week with everyone, we feel like it’s a really good idea to join up with a few of our fellow riders for one more dinner together: good dairy Italian in the newish pedestrian mall of Mamilla. I’m going to miss these people.

Monday was our last day of riding. Derek went out early with the mumchim and climbed back out of the Arava Valley, me following in the mechanic’s truck with the tandem. We met back up at Neot Smadar, and I got back on the saddle. Ouch. The more than four hours of riding the day before had undone most of the healing of Shabbat.

We rode for about 12 or 15 miles to the next rest stop, I fueled up, and we started again. Ahead was at least 20 kilometers (12 miles) of more or less constant climbing. I made it about 3 kilometers before I couldn’t continue, mostly from the saddle pain. Ilan, our mechanic, picked me and the tandem up, Derek got back on his rented Pirello, and I watched the climbers from the truck. It was an interesting ride up, since we were literally riding along the Egyption border most of the way. Big fence. Lots of desert on the other side (in fairness, on both sides). I was told later that the fince is actually a bit on the Egyptian side, so some people could walk into what was technically Egypt at the rest stops.

Our plan was to meet back at the staging area for the final descent into Eilat. We got to the top of the climb, and Derek had already passed. Turns out that the meeting place was down a couple of short drops, and he was waiting there, but Ilan did not know that. As it turns out, Ilan is an experienced tandem captain, and we stopped at the top, he got out and said, “You’re going to ride down with me!” He was quite cheerful about it. I was worried. First, the stoker on a tandem is rarely as big as I am. Second, we’d never ridden together. Third, he’s a bike mechanic, and an Israeli, and..an Israeli bike mechanic. He asked me if I trusted him, I agreed, and we rode. Downhill. Rapidly. More wheeeee (and some silent profanity). After the first drop, he gave me some advice that made the second one go easier. But, wow. Much. More. Agressive. Than. Derek.

Ilan gave up the captain’s seat to Derek for the final descent into Eilat. Derek tells me ignorance is bliss. I had fun. He might have been a little terrified by the dump truck we were in danger of rear-ending. And the screaming brakes. In fairness, the latter made me a little nervous, too. I’m afraid the Guide Dog Center/Ken Velo will need to replace the disks and pads on the brakes ofter the abuse of all the downhills on the ride.

One more thing about the descent into Eilat. We could distinctly feel the heating of the air as we went from the hills to the sea. In about 5 minutes, the temperature went from about 91F to 107F. I have decided there are 3 weather reports for Eilat: Hot, Very Hot, and Please Do Not Wear Anything Flammable Outdoors.

After some pictures at the beach, we had lunch (grilled chicken, kebabs, merguez sausage) and headed back to the hotel for a few hours of rest. In the evening, we had our closing dinner (grilled chicken, kebabs, merguez suasage,and felafel) around the pool. Rabbi Mitch Cohen, National Director of Ramah, asked Derek to speak briefly. He did, and movingly. Thank you, Derek, for everything.

Sunday may have been my best day of biking, ever. Giving my sit-bones a rest on Shabbat seemed to give me much more stamina in that, um, delicate department. There was also a lot of downhill, which let my legs rest quite a bit as well.

We got on the road at Israeli 6AM, which was actually about 6:15. The first order of business was to go from our hotel at the top of Makhtesh Ramon (a geological feature that is a little like a sinkhole with ambitions to be the Grand Canyon) straight to the bottom. It’s about a 1000 ft descent, with a few wide switchbacks, and we went down it like something quite fast indeed. Although it was pretty early in the morning, it was fairly warm already, and we had quite a bracing moment when we went through a thermocline near the bottom where there was a pocket of downright chilly air. Felt really good.

We emerged from the bowl of the makhtesh into the Southern Negev. Another descent gave us our first real mechanical issue of the ride. At 50mph, we were overtaking traffic, and Derek needed to ride the brakes pretty hard. By the time the road leveled, the rear disk brake was partially seized, and we had to wait for the mechanic, or we would not have been able to pedal much farther. We pulled up just before the Paran River crossing, which at this time of year does not involve anything remotely resembling water (although we were told it does run in the winter). Our surroundings reminded me a little of the Great Salt Flats in Utah, or the most desolate places in Nevada. Hot, dry, mostly flat, and nothing tall enough to provide even a little shade. One of the support wagons dropped off a tank of cold water, and we waited about 45 minutes for the mechanic (he had been dealing with other issues behind us).

Off we went, and despite the delay in the desert, I was feeling pretty good. And we rode, and rode, and rode, through a whole lot of moonscape. Eventually, we saw some cliffs in the far distance, and Derek said, “Hey, I think I just saw a rock slide.” We rode a little farther, and he corrected himself. “I think that was actually a tank shooting artillery at the cliff.” Yep, we were passing a military base, and they were in full training mode. We could ultimately hear the sound of shelling and the rat-tat of 50 mm guns. Never been that close to military exercises. Glad we weren’t down range.

Shortly, we came to our lunch stop at Neot Smadar. Before lunch, however, we were to have a tour of the place. A brief tour. Which took 2 hours. There was some grumbling. The tour guide was very earnest, but she really seemed to want us to understand the interpersonal dynamics that are key to the functioning of the kibbutz. It was a little hippie. Their very large central building, which included meeting rooms and art workshops and was pleasantly cooled by what amounted to a very low power swamp cooler, was interesting, but we spent a little too much time processing our reactions, if you will. Lunch, when we finally got it, was vegetarian, naturally. I think it was tasty, but we were a might peckish by that point, so my judgement may have been slightly impaired.

Finally, we headed off for our final destination of the day, Kibbutz Ketura. It wasn’t far from Neot Smadar, but there was a bit of climb to the rim of the Arava Valley. Here is where we fell off our second cliff of the day. The guides insisted we go one at a time, separated by 5 second intervals. Fast. Fun.

Ketura is an interesting place. One of the only (if not the only) old-style kibbutzim left. All funds are pooled among the members, including money from outside work. One reasong they can do this is that they are quite prosperous. They have a very large herd of dairy cows, grow a lot of dates, and, most economically important, they grow red algae which was initially used to produce food dye, then cosmetics, and now antioxidant food supplements (primarily for the Japanese market).

Dinner was our first meat meal not baked in an oven–a poolside bbq. Grilled meat, not covered in sauce. Good way to end a 65 mile day in the saddle.