Mission Accomplished

I rode Ronit to gan (kindergarden) today -- this time quite literally.

Before leaving Dena watched as I struggled to get the braids right -- one on each side of the head, and a pony tail in back. Not exactly as Ronit wanted, but close enough. Mission Accomplished. Before we even get to the front door, Ronit announces that she is NOT biking to gan. No way no how. Well, I am as stubborn as she. I am NOT driving to gan. Certainly not on a beautiful day. I agree to not bike -- figuring we can walk. It doesn't take Ronit long to figure that out and refuse to walk. Hmmm. How about a bribe? A candy from the macolet (store)? Ronit cannot refuse that, but after getting the candy she starts march back towards the house, instead of continuing to gan. Hmmm. Okay, my final offer -- I'll ride out on my bike to gan. Offer accepted. We ride to gan which her sitting side saddle on the bike bar. Not my idea of comfortable, but at least I'm not driving. Mission Accomplished.

Once at gan, Jenny's mom Lori tells me, "Jason -- I forget to tell Dena, but yesterday at their playdate, you would not have believed it. They spoke almost entirely hebrew. Everytime that Jenny started off in English, Ronit would reply in Hebrew." B.H. Mission Accomplished.

Oh yeah, that's not a picture of me or Ronit above, but it is hard to say the words, "Mission Accomplished" without thinking back to that most ironic invocation of them on May 1st, 2003.

Lice Free Again!

I am happy to report that the Glasgow family is Lice free again! It feels great. Lice have been running wild in Ronit's Gan (kindergarten) again. Not suprisingly she ended up with a head full. Now though after some serious combing (mostly by Dena) we have conquered the pests.

Biking for the Arava Institute

I did it! 300+ miles in 5 days of riding (and one day off). It was a fabulous ride. The stats:

• 71 miles day 1, 85 miles day 2, 57 miles day 3, 60 miles day 4, and 60 miles day 5.
• 1 totally flat tire
• 1 slow leak
• total ascent: 2000+ meters (a friend had a GPS, but I forgot to record each day's stats).
  
• max speed: 46 MPH
• max temperature (depending on who you ask): 95, 98 or 108.
• money raised over $4300 (and still counting
• flat tires for the group: over 50.
• money raised by the 120 participants: over $480,000
• pictures snapped: 145 (http://jasonglasgow.phanfare.com/)
• My roomates blog (http://alansalzberg.blogspot.com/2006/05/israel-ride.html)
  

The ride was just fabulous for so many reasons. To start it was vacation and a relaxing time to meet other Israelis, Americans, Jordanians and an Australian who like biking, care about the enviornment, and support the Arava Institute. It felt great to have raised so much money for such a good cause.

Then there was the ride itself. We divided into two groups, the Pioneers (Halutzim) and the Scouts (Tsofim). The pioneers, my group, went significantly faster, farther, and higher each day. I was pretty much in the middle of the pack without working too hard. There's something really fun about waking up at 5 or 6am everyday, and then hopping on a bike for 6 - 8 hours. It is so mindless. a great escape from the real world. The fact is emphasized when you ride through barren desert landscapes. Although it is seriously muscle exercise, intellectually it is very relaxing. Along the way of course we saw lots of beautiful sights, and the guides gave us mini-lectures about the geography, landscape, etc. We got to meet a bunch of the students from the Institute, and it was fascinating to hear their stories. Many of the Arab students come from Jordan (unfortunately it has been hard to get Egyptian students lately). For the Jordanians, having visited Israel and gotten an Israeli stamp in their passports means that they'll never be able to visit other Arab countries. (... Maybe they could get a new clean passport, they claim not...) I think it takes a lot of courage on their part. As much as it infuriates me that an Israel stamp would prevent them from visiting Saudi Arabia, so do the stories of their troubles crossing the Jordan-Israel border. One poor student did not return home for his father's funeral, because he was afraid he would not be able to get back into Israel to complete his studies.

My friend Bob checked out the Israel Ride website (http://www.israelride.org/) and wrote,

How was the ride? I didn't see any pictures of you on the web site -- and everyone sure looked much younger. Hopefully, you were able to find older folks that you could out ride ;)

Younger? I was biking mostly with 40+ years olds, and the guy leading the pack was 60. Sad to say, I couldn't keep up with him. On the otherhand, I think that means that I've got 22 years to catch up. May I be in as good shape in 22 years. The ride was a mix of people. There were 5 teenagers, a fair amount of 20 year olds and 30 year olds (like me), and then even more 40 and 50 year olds. I think the younger ones make for prettier pictures -- an hence my conspicuous absence.

There were just over a dozen riders from Israel. I spent a fair amount of time riding with the other 4 guys from Ra'anana, Alan Salzberg, David Schwartz, Jon Sumroy and Natan Szajnberg (shown below).
Day zero (Ra'anana to Jerusalem)
Alan and I plan to take a cab at 9:00am to Jerusalem. I've got my bike, but we're pretty sure it will fit in the trunk. 8:30AM. The last few minutes. I'm just about finished packing, I'm still sending email, trying to finish up stuff for work. Alan calls. Let's go early. Argh. Have I ever met someone consistently wants to get going 20 minutes early???? I tell him to hold on. I've still got to pack. Yes, I fibbed, but it bought me my 20 minutes I expected. 9:00 I'm downstairs, cab has arrived with Alan. The bike fits. Phew. Alan says we are going to Jerusalem, "Har Zion (Mount Zion)". The cabbie seems like he doesn't know the place. Odd. I tell him near the old train station and the cinematec. This seems to register. Not too much traffic. We're zooming along route 6. Cabbie starts driving like we are in a rush -- which we aren't, and then starts complaining about the horrible Israeli drivers as he passes the cars travelling at sane speeds (which must seem awful slow to him). Hmm. He asks again, "Azeh Malon? (What hotel)" Alan, "Har Tsiyon (Mount Zion)". Now he understands, and explains.... you said something funny before, I didn't understand you. Zayin can either be the 7th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, or a curse word. So because Alan had say "Har Zion" effectively mixing Hebrew and English he was confused -- he though we were swearing at him. Oops. Good that we now have it all sorted out. We arrive no problem at the Malon Har Tsiyon on Mount Zion and check-in. Alan gets his bike, we get out good bags (sunscreen, lip balm, and band-aids courtesy of Johnson & Johnson), water bottles, and biking shirts. A quick ride to verify the bikes work okay, and its time to have meetings. Meet each other, learn the rules of the road, hear the wake up time --- 4:45AM.

Day one (Jerusalem to Ashkelon)
details to follow.

Day two (Ashkelon to Nitazana)
Massages. No water! (details to follow.)

Day three (Askelon to Mitzpeh Ramon)
Kadesh Barmea (hills photo), Egyptian border. Meet Israel soldiers at Army Base.(details to follow.)

Shabbat
Tfilot, Leyning, Student presentations, Havdalah (details to follow.)

Day four (Mitzpeh Ramon to Kibbutz Keturah)
Shacharit with Yael (Photo). Big down hill into crater. Army practice (Namashim photo). 3 riders overcome by the heat. Recover okay at the Kibbutz pool. 2000 year old date tree. (details to follow.)

Day Five (Keturah to Eilat)
Detour to Hizkiyahoo (photo)
Descent into Eilat
Beach and Beer.(details to follow.)

Day Six
- flight back from Eilat to Sde Dov in Tel Aviv. A very quick flight, and just 15 minutes to Ra'anana. It sure beats driving and, I guess, biking.

Day Seven
- I wake up at 6:00AM and don't know what to do. Where's breakfast? Do I have to work? Can't I just go riding all day? I think I'm going through withdrawl.

Another day in Israel, another schnitzel

I am back front The Ride (more about that in the next post), and ready for lunch. Dena says that Margalit is coming home so we'd better have a meat meal -- she's the family carnivore. I don't disagree, having gotten accustomed to 3 good meals a day on The Ride. I volunteer to go to Oaforia (Oaf means chicken in hebrew) on my way back from dropping Ronit at Arielle and Aaron's house. Dani arrives home, but Margalit just rings from below to say that she is going to Maytal's house. Excellent. A nice suprise. I guess I overdid it on the schnitzel.

Dinner time. Margalit and Ronit are back. Casual conversation. "So what did you have for lunch at Maytal's?"

Margalit: "Schnitzel"

"And Ronit how was Arielle and Aaron's?"

Ronit: "We had schnitzel too. We always have schnitzel there"

I'm beginning to think that it wouldn't be Israel if we didn't all have schnitzel for lunch everyday.

Away biking

Tomorrow I start my bike ride for the Arava Institute. I can't wait. Went to the Gym today with Alan for 60 minutes of spinning. I think I'm ready. So actually, tomorrow I travel to Jerusalem for orientation, etc. On Wednesday morning, I start biking. I'll be out of touch for a week. Full report on my return.

Zavitan, Katzrin, Golan Hike

Visiting a field school has been on our list for along time, and it finally bubbled to the top. We had initially made plans to go away with the Mirchin’s and a large group of Ra’anana people for a Shabbat B’Teva somewhere south of the Kinneret. Those plans fell though more or less at the last minute, but we decided to take the opportunity of a free weekend to visit Katzrin. Ever since hiking Nahal Yahudiah with the Dani, Margalit, Miriam and Philippe, I had been hoping to find a time to hike Nahal Zavitan, which is part of the same Yahudiah nature reserve.

Friday afternoon we set off for the field school. Dena had reserved a room (sleeps 8), signed us up for Shabbas dinner, and breakfast. On the way we tried to stop at Breichat Hamishumin, but as we arrived at 4:30 and the gates close as 4:00, we didn’t make it. No big deal, it was just a 10 minute detour. In no time at all we were at the field school. Everything looked great – more or less as I remember field schools. Clean and simple. Nothing fancy. A few fights over who gets to sleep on the bunk beds. Miriam was itching to sleep up top, but Dena quickly reminded me that the front desk had said one must be at least 10 years old to sleep up top. Wink. Wink. Miriam couldn’t argue with that! With a little cajoling, we managed to get all the kids to agree to sleep down low. Either on the bottom bunks or on the pull out trundles. That’s good, because I didn’t think the railings were very high, and I didn’t want any broken noses.

Shabbat dinner was, well, field school food. It was exactly what I expected – instant chicken soup with noodles, gefilte fish, overcooked cinnomon apple chicken, rice, and animal shaped shnitzel for the kids. Ronit was happy with the soup and shnitzel, I managed to each everything, and the rest of the family, well, they said they prefer Mama’s shabbas dinner. We were not the only ones at dinner. There was also a group of 8 families, co-incidentally also from Ra’anana. As you can image, it came time to say Kiddush, and nobody had a kippa. So on go the napkins – for the 8 adults and at least as many boys. Very typical for Israeli’s. It reminded Dena and I of our friend’s Atai and Tali’s wedding where Atai wore a napkin while signing the Ketubah. The kids got a real kick out the sight – at first not understanding what they were doing with napkins on their heads.

Shabbas morning – another field school meal. Dani didn’t like the milk because it was warm already and it was like water. He’s used to 1% not skim. It was not the same as the hotel breakfasts that we’ve had lately on all our other trips, but it was sufficient.

By 9:30 we had finished, packed our day packs with 10 litres of water, lots of food, changed into bathing suits, checked a map, and were ready to hike! There was only one little problem – we couldn’t find the trail head. Luckily Dena had remembered seeing a black and white marker the day before, and so we set out following her. Now, we never did see that marker, but we did find the trail head. So kudos to Mama for having the right instincts.

We had a long hike across fields that were used for grazing cows, and we were relatively close to some of the cows. Hiked to Zavitan, eventually got to the Hexagon pools, and had a great time swimming. Dani wasted no time in climbing the cliff and jumping off into the water. Of course he wanted me to join him in jumping. I said yes, but the I got up there, and well, it seemed really high. Did I say it seemed very high? I no longer ride the rides at amusement parks. I figure I’m old enough to not need to pretend I’m a kid. I tried explaining that to Dani, who could only respond with “wimp!”. I tried explaining that I wasn’t scared, I was terrified. No luck. Dani still wanted me to jump.

Eventually, we left the pool and hiked on to see the 30meter waterfall. Stunning. We stopped in the shade of a tree and had lunch, decided it would be too much to hike to the bottom of the waterfall, and so, headed back to the first pool.



More swimming. More name calling. “Wimp”. Margalit jumped, and jumped again. Not that I care about being called wimp, but Dani seemed very upset that I wasn’t jumping. Feeling just a little bit manipulated, I closed my eyes and jumped. Argh! Well, at least I only had to do it once.
instant

After lots of swimming, we started our hike back. This hike I finally remembered to bring an extra trash bag to collect the garbage from all litter bugs. It was no problem filling the entire bag. Finally back to the field school by 5:30. Dena and I looked at each other in disbelief. The family is getting older if we can take all our kids on an 8 hour hike!. Wow! Ronit was quite a trooper.

Biking (more)

Went with Alan to Latrun today for a 42 mile ride. The roads were much busier with cars, and we only saw a handful of bikers. I guess Shabbat is the day to ride. Just the same it was a great ride. Good to get in the distance and the hills. We took a side road today past Kibbutz Tzora which I had visited when I was in Israel in 1986. Road up to Mitpeh Emek and got a great view of the valley. Then back to Beit Shemesh. Once we past Beit Shemesh on route 38 South, the traffic lightened up, and it was mostly just us, the bikes and the pavement. 42 miles, probably 600 meters of elevation, and 13.6 mph average. Its not particularly fast, but Alan has a hybrid bike, not a road bike, and that slows us down a little.

Meanwhile, I've collected two pictures from the newspaper -- one a picture of the separation fence that I wrote about previously. This photo is taken from around Jersualem, but the fence near Kalkiliya is similar. And then, a picture of what is going on the other side of the fence -- the side we did not visit.