Biking Ra'anana

I set out on Friday to make it to the beach -- this time I even took my camera so I could take a picture of the great view. I also wanted to explore to see if I could find the shortest way to the beach, in the hopes of taking a kid (or Dena) with me the next time. I wanted to avoid having to bike either in, or on the sidewalk along, a busy road. I headed straight down Ahuza to Park Ra'anana, and then tried to take a left into the fields just south of the Park. Dani and I had biked past the fields once before and seen people racing tiny remote control cars. We'll this didn't turn out so well. Pretty soon I was stuck with just fields in front of me, no clear dirt road, and zillions of ants.

So back to the main road, I headed in the direction of the dirt road that I've taken before. On the way there, I saw another promising path -- with another biker on it. I tried that, but after going in a long circuitous route, I ended up right back at my normal dirt road. So much for a short cut to the beach. I followed the dirt road until it crosses a ditch -- only today, the ditch was filled water. Another biker was stopped by the edge of the road looking at the water and contemplating what to do. I watched two or three cars splash through and judged the water to be a couple feet deep. Nope. I can mountain bike, but I can't river bike. So I followed the path of the river until it dried disappeared (dried up?), and found myself parallel to the train tracks. Not a bad place to be if you like trains, and since there is a dirt road along side the tracks, it is a pretty good place to bike.

To make a long story short, I never made it to the beach, but had a great time biking around the fields of Ra'anana & Herziliya. Next week I'll see if I can find a way to the beach.

Still at the beach

It has been unseasonably warm lately, so while Sarah tells me it is 27F in boston, it is just about 27C here. On shabbas we took vacation from Shul and headed to the beach at Bayt Yannai. It was a gorgeous day and the water was pretty comfortable. Not quite warm, but temperate enough that all the kids dunked their heads. Dani was dropped on Friday at Yaddin's in Hofit so he could celebrate Yaddin's birthday and spend the weekend there, so he missed our day at the beach, but he had plenty of fun with Yaddin. Dena, Margalit and I (though not all together) walked along the Cross Israel Trail (see also Biking the Yarkon), up to נחל אלקסנדר (the Alexander River) and followed the river a little ways too.

Biking the Yarkon

Being thanksgiving day and all, I figure the kids shouldn't be going to school. On top of that the weather was unseasonable warm. I talked to Sarah who said it was 27 degrees in Boston. Well in Ra'anana it was almost 27 also -- but Celsius. On Thursday's Dani has two periods of Math, two of English and two of science. All the classes are taught by someone other than his homeroom teacher, because today is his homeroom teacher's day off. I figured, if she has the day off, then maybe Dani should too.

As a digression, it is an interesting system here. The kids go to school 5 days a week, but the Ed. department recognizes that it would be too much to have the teachers teach 6 days a week, so teachers get a day off in the middle of the week. (Actually today was also Miriam's teacher's day off. I dropped Miriam off at 8:05 -- late, and the substitute was still not there. I tried to convince the class that I was the substitute for about 5 minutes, but had a hard time grabbing their attention. 30+ kids, that's too many for me. Eventually I left, just as the real substitute arrived.)

Anyways, on Tuesday after exercising at the Gym together, Dena and I stopped by the bike store to get her a bike. Being there I noticed a book on mountain biking trails for kids in Israel. Even though it was in Hebrew, I couldn't resist. So book in hand, I plotted out a route near Zichron Ya'akov in the hills, down to Binyamina along the shore. Dani though said he would prefer road biking to off-road biking. So we decided to just wing it. I'd heard that there is a nice trail along the Yarkon river in Tel Aviv. Searching on the Web I couldn't find much information, and my new book didn't have an info either. Just the same, we threw the bikes into the car, and headed for the parking lot at the Tel Aviv power plant where the Yarkon river dumps into the ocean. So far so good. We even saw painted bicycles on the sidewalk near the parking lot. It was no problem finding the path a long the Yarkon. It is paved for the first 8km or so, and made for great biking. Actually, as this is part of the Israel Trail (a hiking trail from the northern tip of Israel all the way to Eilat) for much of the 8km you can choose to ride either on the pavement, or on a dirt path along side the pavement. I tried both. The tail reminds me of the path along the Charles river in Boston.


At the end of the huge Yarkon Park, we got to a huge traffic intersection undergoing construction. Nobody seems to have explained to the government that more you pave, the more traffic you produce. (I just hope the projects here are cheaper than Boston's big dig). We lost the trail after the intersection and started biking along city streets. I was getting lost and we could not longer see the Yarkon river. All of a sudden though, we passed a statue of Raoul Wallenberg, and I started to recognize the place -- hey, we are in Attidim -- the industrial park where EMC is located. Wow. Then we passed a bike store. We popped in and got directions to the bike trail. We really were not too far off course -- though now the trail was all off road. We went through quite a bit of mud, crossed Kvish 4 (route 4), and followed the river for awhile, until we decided we'd had enough of the off road trail. Turned around had lunch in the Yarkon park, and finally back to the car to drive to Ra'anana. All in all maybe 18 km, and lots of fun.

One neat thing that we saw along the path was water fountains that had a special place to fill water bottles. That's pretty nifty!

Dani makes the shot

Here's a few pictures of Dani's latest basketball game. Elitsor (Dani's team) was playing the other Ra'anana team which is known to be the best in the league. Second quarter, Dani was on the court. They started the quarter down 10 to 4. With 43 seconds left, the score was 20 - 18, and Elitsor had the ball. The fans were wild hoping to tie the score for the half. Then the other team stole the ball, and somehow managed to score 2 baskets in 43 seconds. Boo! Ended the quarter down 6 points, and then game final was down 18!

The highlight of the half (for me) was Dani scoring his foul shot as shown in the two pictures (bringing the score to 14-12).

Pictures

Nice Hug! Margalit and the duck!

Rosh Hanikra with Nusha

Miriam in face paint after Appolonia Sukkot Festival.

Culture Shock

I'm not sure if it is culture shock, or just Dena and I finally getting a life. The other week I was walking down Ahuza with Allan on our way to a Synagogue Board meeting (more on that later), and I passed a sign that said, "David Broza and his guitar". It was pretty impressed with myself, because normally walking past a sign board in hebrew I miss everything. Perhaps the few words (3 in hebrew) made it easier to read. Dena and I had seen Broza in concert this spring at the JCC, and I was really excited to see him here. He was playing at Barby in Kfar Saba (the next town over). True it wasn't going to start until 10pm, and that's a little late, but since it was on a Thursday night, and we already had a sitter booked, I figured we had to go. Alan was of a similar opinion. I agreed to call and get the tickets. Next morning, I called, and asked for tickets. They asked my name, "Jason", and how many seats, "4". Bye. What??? He said show up by 9:45. You mean I don't have to pay in advance by credit card?? Alan, said he would drive, and I overheard him discussing with Dena what time to pick us up. When he said 9:10 Dena thought he was crazy, but I convinced her that we should get there early to make sure we got good seats and to make sure there wouldn't be a problem with the tickets.

Thursday night, get there at 9:30. Okay, a little early. There are a few other people hanging around, but the doors to the club aren't open yet. At least the ticket counter is. I pickup our 4 tickets, and Dena asks, "Is there smoking inside?", to which the answer was of course, "yes". Dena expressed her opinion that that was the wrong answer, but I don't think the ticket seller cared too much. On the way over Alan explained that Israeli singers often have two gigs a night and we should expect Broza until 11:00. Well, it turns out, we shouldn't even expect the doors of the club to open until 10:30. The club is a small place (200 seats?), and we start walking around. Every table seems to be reserved -- then I realize, oh, our name must be somewhere. Sure enough it was. Alan had the right idea, Broza showed up around 11:30. Alan & Lisa's friends really had the right idea. They met us at the club at 11:15! If only I had known -- we could have gone out to dinner first :-)

So, at our bedtime, Broza takes the stage and plays a great concert until past 1. It was well worth staying up for -- or at least I think so. Dena fell asleep for a few songs. I'm keeping my eyes open for more concerts.

Jewish Basketball

It's real hard to get a good photo of Dani playing basketball with my little digital camera. The zoom isn't strong enough, and the lighting is such that everything is either blurry or too dark to see. Nonetheless, I thought you all might like to see Dani (or his back) playing basketball for Alitsor Ra'anana with the Israeli flag in the background and the kippah on the head. He's the kid on the right hand side without a number on his shirt.

Here's the short story. His team is 2 and 1. The first game (at home) I attended and watched Dani play the 3rd quarter. They play with small basketballs, and low hoops. I can practically touch the hoop. So this is a little different that what Dani is used to in the States. Dani had a good game and scored 5 points (or 7) in a game that they won 40 to 30. The second game was an away game at Kochav Yair, which as Dani tells it, is practically in the West Bank. What he means is that it is next to the security fence. It is not actually in the West Bank. I missed that game, and they lost, 60 to 50, though it seems like there were some irregularities with the scoring, and the true score might have been 54 or even 56. Dani had a great game, playing the 2nd quarter and the 4th quarter. A few days after that game we rented Coach Carter a great movie about a coach he turns a losing inner city high school team into an undefeated team. I was inspired. The third game was this week, and I missed the first quarter which unfortunately was when Dani played. His team won 60 to 52. Dani had to guard a guy that was at least a foot taller than him, though luckily for Dani , the giant was not particularly coordinated. He got called from traveling more times than I can remember. Anyway, it was quite a challenge for Dani to guard such a tall guy without fouling him.

A tour of Ra'anana

If you've read Margalit's coverage of Ra'anana history you probably know just about all there is to know, but I do a have a few more details to add... I was lucky because I volunteered to chapperone the class on their field trip around Ra'anana. They told me to arrive at 8:00 with Margalit, which I did, only to be told by the teacher to come back in half and hour. That was just fine, because I ran to the little mini-market on our street and did a little shopping. In 30 minutes I was back at school. (If you can't tell, I am really enjoying living on the same street as a mini-market and the kids school. It is very convenient). The teacher then told me the plan for the day -- a presentation at Yad Libanim, a walk to city hall, and then more presentations and activities at the Bar-Tov school. I would be back by 1:00pm. Woah! I thought I'd signed up for a couple hours, not half a day.

We set off on the trip, and Margalit is very lucky (and me too as chaperone) because her class only has 23 kids, and on Wednesday's three kids are always absent. So we had a nice small class of 20 kids. It makes it a little easier to keep them all together. I was asked to bring up the rear, another parent was the middle, and Tsipi was leading the way. Well, you can imagine, there was one kid who put on his socks the wrong way and so was limping the 5 blocks to Yad Libanim, shoes untied, sweetshirt falling on the ground constantly. I did my best to help him along, and hold his stuff, and keep him together with the class. You can't tell a 4th grader anything, and he would have nothing of actually stopping to fix his socks. It was cute.

Yad Libanim has a great little history museum, with statues of the original immigrants from New York, small models of some of the buildings (like city hall that was build in the 30s), diaramas, and many pictures of things that are recognizable around town. It is a great little museum and it does an excellent job showing the history of how Ra'anana was started and developed. We learned some neat things, like that fact that none of the streets running into Ahuza (the main drag) cross. They are all T intersections. Apparently this was designed to slow the traffic.

I'll have to cut short now, but all in all the field trip was a lot of fun, and I certainly enjoyed getting a guided tour and explanations at the museums. I had my camera so I tried to take a bunch of pictures, and then the kids all wanted their pictures taken too.