In Joshua's Shoes: The Ride of a Lifetime

I hope you've been enjoying the long long posts I've posted about my time on the Ride4Reform. Not only was it an amazing way to see Israel in a very different way, I had the opportunity to get to know a lot of amazing people. Even more than that, I was very happy to help raise money for the IMPJ and Progressive Judaism in Israel.

Aside from the pictures and posts on this blog, I have a post available at TCJewfolk.com discussing that part of the experience. You can read it at this link or from their website that contains a wide variety of posts about Judaism in the Twin Cities.


I had an incredible time on the Ride4Reform and I hope that I can make it work to come back and do it again some time soon. Next year it starts in Haifa and ends in Mevasseret Tzion. It looks like it could be an amazing trek.

To learn more about the ride visit their site at riding4reform. And enjoy a few more pictures from the ride or if I'm friends on facebook you can see them there.

The Standard View

The View On Top of Tel Gezer - Day 1

Pit Stop in an Orchard - Day 2

Dirt Roads Through Fields - Day 3

Riding Down a Desert Hill - Day 5

Ride4Reform: Day 5

It was chilly and windy when we convened in the garage of our hotel in Arad. We received final instructions and information about the route that morning. One of the most important things to take note of was the wind, especially at the beginning when we were going to bike directly into the desert and the wind.

They weren’t kidding.

We fought our way to the Arad Airfield against the wind the entire way uphill. On the airfield the wind got worse, and I thought that it couldn’t get any worse. That was until we turned into the desert. Rolling hills of sand-swept off-road path threw themselves at us.



Struggling uphill I had to orient my bike hard to the right and lean into the right in order to stay upright and on the path. At one point I was blown off to the left the wind was so strong.

Once the wind had settled a little bit, we came out of our hiding place to continue on the route down to the Dead Sea. The further down into the desert we went, the warmer it got. There was also less wind the further we went, so we pressed on.

When the organizers said that the last day was going to be the most technically challenging, they were not joking at all. Paths were hard to navigate because you couldn’t get the tires to catch traction and it was littered with rocks on top of the track and poking out of the sandy road.

After finally reaching desert we made our way towards the Dead Sea. Twinkling in the distance it was a goal we needed to reach. Up and down through the valleys of dried out river beds we would our way around the hills until we finally made it to an overlook to see Ein Bokek. It was an incredible view to see.

But we didn’t look at the view for too long. We needed to make it to Masada. Deeper into the desert we went.



We approached one last descent that we needed to tackle before our last small climbs before dropping into Masada. I knew it was going to be a challenge and waited to be one of the last to go down. I had been having a hard time riding in the pack because some of the younger riders were not always looking to their sides before changing their direction.

Down the hill I went. I was careful to keep my hand near the rear brake, but I wanted to feel the air whipping past as I went down the hill. Like the day before, I picked a line of attack and went for it. Passed the point I had picked out, rounded the corner and picked a new line to ride down.

I worked my way down the hill and saw that I was at the last descent of the ride. That is it and I was done.
We were only 8-10km from Masada and I was ready to Cautiously I worked my way down the steep path as rocks skidded out from under my tires. I could see the bottom of the last descent, I picked a line I wanted to follow around the rocks at the bottom, loosened up on the brake a little and started down.

It was going great until I realized that I didn't have the best approach towards these last few rocks I needed to get around. I tried to correct my path but I couldn't change direction even though I was moving pretty slowly. I hit the rocks and expected that the shock-absorbers would do the trick and get me around it.

I felt my front wheel stop short and the back wheel start to come off the ground. The next thing I know I'm upside down and my bike is coming right after me. I had the presence to kick it away so it didn't land on me and I hit the ground with a thud. I looked to see if anyone was coming behind me, and it was clear. I made sure I wasn't broken anywhere, and I was fine.

Then I picked up my bike and started walking it towards the group that was waiting. The shifting mechanism on the handlebars was bent, and the deraileur was bent into the spokes of my rear wheel. With only 8 km until Masada, I thought I was going to hop into the truck and be taken there.

I think these are the rocks that I couldn't avoid. I don't remember which ones exactly


I don't know if the resolution is good enough, but the derailleur is bent into the spokes.


Instead, our amazing volunteers did the best they could to bend the deraileur back into position and perform a mini-tune up to let me ride it out.

It took a long time to get through to the end because I was fighting the machinery on my bike. It didn’t shift as quickly as I hoped and I was stuck working in gears that are not good for riding down hill, especially into a headwind. But I finally made it out of the desert paths and onto the road.

A short, snaked, paved road and I made it to the end. Waiting at the bottom of the hill was a group of the Israeli Rabbis who had been staying in Arad for their convention. They were singing and clapping as we flew into the park and hopped off our bikes for lunch in the shadow of Masada.

About ten minutes later a bus full of HUC students joined us to celebrate the completion of our long journey. It was amazing!

Ride4Reform: Day 4

The Ruins for the Pit Stop

It was a cold, rainy morning. I have never put on that much gear to go for a bike ride. Layered and capped off with a raincoat I was as ready as I could be. We knew that the morning was going to have a long climb, followed by forests and then another long climb to the peak of a mountain for lunch.

Five minutes into the ride the leaders ordered us to stop and wait under some trees because it was raining too hard for us to keep biking. So we waited for the clouds to pass over us. With drizzle still falling on us we moved towards our first objective; Climb Number One.

At the beginning it didn’t seem like it would be that big of a deal. I hadn’t looked at the chart for the day. I reached what I thought was the peak and the road started to turn. As I made it around the corner I saw that we weren’t done yet and it was just getting steeper. YES!!!

I continued climbing, and climbing, and climbing the hill. By the time we made it to the top I was exhilarated! Not that tired, just excited to be at the top of the hill. It was an incredible view and completely worth the effort. I kept thinking about the climbs I watch during the Toure de France. This one felt really steep and I wondered what the grade of the incline was. It averaged between 14% and 19%. This is not nearly the same inclines that professionals ride, but I have to tell you, it was intense and a lot of fun!



A few kilometers later we met another part of our group that didn’t want to deal with this climb, but they wanted to tackle the highest climb of the five-day-ride. Working our way through another forest we started to go up Mount Amasa.




Working and working we finally made our way to the top of the mountain. The peak we sat on was 850 meters above Sea Level and we had climbed 500 meters of it! Again we were fighting against the winds that whip around the peak of a mountain and I was very thankful for the structure we sat in.

As we were preparing to leave, the guides explained to us that part of our descent would be incredibly technical. This meant that we needed to pay a lot of attention to the rocks that could be in our way. I was excited that we had practiced on many smaller technical descents and I was ready to roll.

The entire descent (that wasn’t only a descent) was all off-road. The path was rockier and harder to keep a grip on the ground. Until we hit the technical part.



They asked us to get off and walk our bikes over a small section of it because the wind was blowing too hard and the path was very challenging. But once we got through that, it was back on the bike. I set weight back on the saddle, gripped the handlebars and eased off my brakes.

Incredible!

At times I intentionally pulled up on my handlebars so I could jump over some obstacle that was in my way. There were other times that the rocks themselves tossed me into the air. The trick to getting down was to keep your weight back and your hands on the rear brake only.

You cannot really waver, you need to make a decision about the line you want to bike down and go for it. If you’re too nervous, it’s best to walk for a little while.

Safely at the bottom, I was out of breath and my calves were on fire. I spent the whole descent standing, it’s best to stand to absorb some of the shock instead of taking all of the bumps you hit. This was an amazing thrill and I was so glad I had decided to do it.

After waiting for everyone to catch up we continued towards Arad, where we would stay that night. To get there we moved through some desert towns and one of the cutest things I had even seen happened.

In one of the villages we passed through, a bunch of kids came running after us. I had a massive smile come across my face when one kid ran into his house and came out on his bicycle. He started chasing after us and it was hilarious!

Fields Before Hills

On the way towards the hotel we would stay at we were surrounded by amazing views and more rolling hills.

Finally in Arad, we got to stay overnight at a hotel and meet with some of the Israeli Rabbis that were meeting at the same hotel for a conference. What a way to wind down for the last segment of the Ride4Reform.

But if you think that was a tough day, Thursday was insane. Look for the day 5 post to come soon.

Ride4Reform: Day 3

We stopped near collapsed train tracks for a pit stop

The morning of the third day of the ride we were confronted with a lot of long rolling hills and they were mostly off-road. We were on the sides of farms that kept trying to steer us off to towards the left. It was still an adjustment trying to stay on course while dodging rocks and loose patches throughout the morning, all the time leading up towards a nice little climb on gravel.



I must admit that I wasn’t completely adjusted riding on this type and after a few minutes of climbing this hill, my legs were burning with lactic acid. When I get to the top of a hill, I like to just go down again. I can keep churning my legs without working that hard down a hill and try to clear some of that out. We stopped.



Rather annoyed, I hopped off my bike to look around the beginning of this forest. I found an incredible ancient well and cave site that we stopped near. The views were incredible, even though at times I didn’t always have the chance to look around because I was working on the paths.

We left the forest by descending through it. It was incredible!

Quickly down the hill with a little bit of skidding around the corners I got to the bottom safely. Being the third day, they had told us to be careful since most people started to feel comfortable on their bikes and they start to take risks that they don’t really need to. I have to admit, I may have fallen into that trap. But I was safe the whole way down.

After waiting for the rest of the group to meet us at the bottom of the forest, we crossed onto the road. I was really happy to be back climbing on pavement until Itay, our leader, said that we were turning off to head up another hill, a pretty good sized one.

It wasn’t terribly challenging, but I was starving and had way too much water. I worked so hard to get to lunch.



At the top of the hill the wind was whipping around and it was cold, really cold. But our hosts for lunch had a Bedowin style building set up that shielded us from the wind. They were fantastic and had prepared some fresh Lavinah for us. Lavinah is a warm Laffa (large pita that is similar to a Chipotle wrap) filled with Zatar, fresh Goat Cheese and Oil. Amazing!

Most people went on a tour of the Winery, located below us, but I decided to stay above and stretch out. My legs were getting tired. But once everyone came back topside we hopped back on our bikes and started towards another long climb to finish off the day (this was in preparation for the wicked climb we would have on Wednesday).

On the way down from lunch I started to feel that my front tire was low. I kept checking the level from the top of my bike and it didn’t look that bad. Then I made a wide left turn. I needed to stop and fix it.

We filled it with air and I started our climb. I love climbing!

I caught a good chunk of the group, but by the time I got to the top of the hill I was just about riding on the rims again (riding on the rims: a tire that is so low that the metal structure of the rim is almost touching the ground).

A puncture. Ugh. Luckily the support staff pulled up behind me to lend me a bike to finish the day. It was mostly a long descent towards our Kibbutz, Kibbutz Kramim,

After fighting with my bike all day on Monday, I missed it at the end of the day on Tuesday. There was something different about the balance, the shifters, the shock-absorbers and the handlebars. Something just didn’t really feel good about it. I only had 3km to finish, most of it downhill. But I was really happy to finish and not get picked up by the support truck.

After some long stretching, I was glad to go to bed early. Wednesday was going to be a tough day.

Wednesday, Day 4, is coming soon.

Ride4Reform: Days 1 and 2

I'm more of a road-biker. In fact, before this year I had never been on an off-road trail since I was 12 or 13. Yeah, I'd been out on my mountain bike a little this year to train for the ride itself, but we didn't do any actual trail riding.



As we got started we hit a hill or two. I really quickly got the hang of not pushing down on the handlebars, since that's just wasted energy. But that shock-absorbers in the front of my bike really came in handy once we started to get out onto trails. About an hour or two into the ride we came to Tel Gezer, an amazing view of an ancient settlement. And that wasn't the only thing there.



Lunar Park is the term that Israeli Bikers use for a trail that's set up like a roller coaster path. Short, steep climbs followed by short, steep descents and some nice embanked turns. I was really nervous at the start of it, I'm not a huge fan of roller coasters, but it was totally worth it once I dove head first into the first descent.

We finished the 55km of the first day and ended up at Kibbutz Galon sore and exhausted, but it felt awesome to roll into the gate of the kibbutz. And if I thought I was sore that night, that was nothing compared to the pain I felt in the morning when I hopped back on my bike. After spending about 4 and half hours in the saddle the day before, I wasn't really happy sitting in the exact same position the next day.

That soreness became numb after the first twenty minutes of biking (and slowly but surely, I stopped noticing that pain every morning when we hopped back on the bike).

It wasn't more than 10 minutes or so into the ride on the second day that we ran into a real obstacle. There was a tunnel we needed to go through, but there had been some rain and combined with bad drainage, it was flooded!

Can't go over it. Can't go around it. Gotta go through it!



It took us a very long time to get everyone through this mess. We could only really go one person at a time and many people didn't want to get themselves that dirty. We tried different tricks, but in the end, there was nothing you could do. You just had to get muddy.

Then came something I was really excited for: Rolling Hills! Slightly steep, but short climbs followed by quick descents only to go up another hill. There was going to be a series of four of these in a row and I was really excited to get after them. But there were a few problems I ran into.



There was mud all over my derailleur (derailleur: the device that changes the gears on your bike) and it wouldn't let me shift quickly. On top of that, I was coming at this ride with the mindset that I ride my road bike with. My deraileurs on my road bike are much nicer and it is a lot easier to shift. So to my shock, I couldn't climb!

I love climbing and I couldn't do it. I was so bummed that I just couldn't get my bike to respond to me the way I expected. By the time I got up to the end of the last climb, after dropping my chain two or three times (dropping my chain: when the chain falls off the gears). I was really frustrated. Sharon was there, so I staged a nice picture showing my feelings for my bike. Don't worry I didn't actually kick it.



By the end of the second day, I had performed a little road-side maintenance with the help of our guides and I was able to finish in good spirits. Especially after our last few kilometers.

Single Track was an amazing way to finish the day. At the widest, the patch was the width of a tractor tire. At the narrowest it was as wide as a bike tire. Complete with quick turns, hills and descents, rocks and trees in the way. Single track was so much fun and took us almost to the end of ride.

It was a quick finish to Kibbutz Ruhummah. One of the most satisfying things was leaving through the gate of one kibbutz and riding almost to the door of our room at the second kibbutz.

Check back soon for day 3.

An Achey Friday Morning

There is so much to say about the Ride 4 Reform. It was so much fun. I got to see incredible places all over Israel from the back seat of my bike. I took a pretty hard fall 8km from the end of the trip, so I'm pretty sore this morning. But on the whole, it was fantastic and I feel great and so accomplished. I don't have too much time to write about it now, I have two mid terms the first two days of the week and there will be a blog post for TC Jewfolk to come out with some information. I don't want to duplicate that post before it runs, so... more to come soon and you can see pictures on facebook already!

Riding for Reform Today!

Blogger has an incredible feature I've been abusing every so often. I can write a post in my free time and have it upload while I am nowhere near a computer. By the time this goes online, I will be on the seat of a bike somewhere in Israel. I have no idea where I will actually be, but we start around 7AM Israel Time.

If we're running on Israeli Standard time, that means a lot closer to a 7:30 in start time. Our last news letter gave us the route we'll be taking along with some information about the elevation and the steepness of the climbs. If you want to check that information, you can get it here The Route.

On Thursday last week, we picked up our Jerseys from Dusty, who has been one of the point people on our end. Of course we took a few pictures to have a good time with them.




A special thanks to Sam and Allie for taking the pictures and to Steven for sending them out to all of the riders.

I'm really excited to get on the road for the ride. And if you are able to support me at all, I'm still working on fundraising. You can donate and support me at this link Donate Here. Any support you can give is greatly appreciated.

Another Training Ride & In Joshua's Shoes: Riding for Reform

I went out for a training ride with Dusty and Steven on Friday morning. What a way to start the day.

I was up at six in the morning to eat a little and warm up before getting on the bike. By 6:50 I was on the road and meeting up with the two of them. Then the skies opened up and started to rain on us. Only for the first hour of the ride did we have to deal with the water. We went out to the separation barrier, through Gilo, towards the old city of Jerusalem, up into the Jerusalem Forrest and back to my apartment.

We took a long time to get through the ride, a solid three hours, and went 23 miles. I think it was better that we took or time because it's been a while since I've rode for that long. Usually I ride hard, but for less time. This was much better and more similar to what we're going to do on the Ride for Reform in three weeks.

I had a little problem during the ride. There was a point that a car tried to cut me and Dusty off. It ended up pulling put after me, before Steven. I couldn't see him as we continued down the hill. So as we made a long left turn I spotted my line and tried to look back over my shoulder to see if I could pick him up behind us.

Apparently I didn't get my line correct and as I was looking back for him, I smacked into the curb. BOOM! Over the handlebars I went, scraping my knees up pretty nicely. Nothing deep, nothing bloody. Just some skinned knees. The problem I'm having is that I didn't realized that I hurt my shoulder when I went over the top.

It's killing me now. I don't have pain free range of motion and it's really bugging me. But there's nothing I can really do, just hope I heal before the next flag football game on Tuesday.

I have a running now at TCJewfolk about the Ride for Reform. I'm trying to raise money to help the IMPJ and the Reform Movement in Israel. If you are able to contribute, any donations help! For those of you in the states, it is a tax deductible donation and you can donate at their website.

Training Day

Wait, we have a few days off?

Yes!

For Chanukah HUC gave us a four-day-weekend! That means I actually had a lot of free time and a Sunday like I was used to.

So instead of sitting around all day on Saturday doing homework, I joined a a few of the other riders for Ride4Reform this year on a training ride. Dan took us on a short route towards Yad Vashem. But instead of going to the museum, we took a left down a sweet hill into Ya'ar Yerushalayim (the Jerusalem Forrest). It was a nice ride complete with some hills both up and down. I hadn't been out on a bike for a few weeks so it felt great getting out there on the road and feeling the pavement pass beneath me.

The is something rewarding about climbing a hill for five minutes. Winded and fighting for breath climbing over the crest and seeing a steep decline. Whipping down it as wind rushes past your face to the point that you can no longer hear the traffic. There is nothing better for a Shabbat afternoon.

Why on Shabbat? Because most of the city of Jerusalem doesn't drive on that day. Fewer cars means that we all feel much safer.

It's also great going in a group. For me, I do like sitting on a bike at the Yimkah (spelled in English YMCA), and listening to music to keep my legs churning as hard as I can. But it's so much better to go out with a group of friends. Today there were only five of us, which is a good start to the group we have riding in March. I missed a few of the earlier rides, so I am a bit behind.

On the bad news side of things, my brakes were squeaking. Every time I squeezed it, a high pitched whine came from the front wheel. Then, as we were riding, I could hear the brakes rubbing while we were out. That means tomorrow, when I still don't have school, I'm going to head down to the bike shop and see if they can fix that. I would take care of it myself, but there are two issues.
1) I don't own the right tools here.
2) I've never had disc-brakes on a bike and I'd rather not break them.

Back to the homework,
Happy Hanukah

Ride4Reform Update

As a group, we have been doing a lot of fundraising already. We've had two bake sales, which have been going well. Last night was a ton of fun; the Latke Eating Contest.

The Year in Israel Program was challenged by the Los Angeles campus of HUC-JIR to a latke eating contest. The rules were, eat as many latkes as possible in 7 minutes. After our Chanukah celebration last night, the contest was on. I decided that I didn't really want to risk throwing off my "intense training regimen" (read; casual workouts) by piling on tons of latkes. Instead there were six competitors that ate as many as possible. Guess who won? Yeah, my roommate. Apparently she is the latke eating champ! And she beat the highest number put up by LA by eating 25 or 26 latkes.

I wish I had pictures to put up, but my camera is in transit to the states to get fixed. Hopefully that will be back with Kaitin when she gets here so I can resume taking an obnoxious number of pictures.

There are also a few quick updates about the Ride4Reform this year;

Check out the page I created on Facebook at the link here.

Or if you would like to check out their page, they have a Facebook Fan-Page, complete with some photos from a recent ride on part of the route for this spring.

Finally, the last place you can check out if you need to get your fix of ride4reform information, Marina and Dusty put together a wordpress site that will be the main way the group will put information out, read bios about everyone who is riding with our team this year, and look at some of the videos from the latke eating contest.

And last but not least, I will shortly be finally registered for the ride. Once I have taken care of that, I will let you know how you can donate to the cause if you are able to. Honestly, every little bit will help!

Off to the gym, I'm going to try to sit on the bike for a little while this afternoon.

Ride for Reform

Earlier this week I went to the first meeting for the Ride for Reform, the bike ride I am doing next spring. I'm really excited to be getting started on this. Then reality started to set it, I only have a few months to get ready for the ride.

They have posted the route on their website, and it doesn't look that intense, but I've never rode this far on back to back days before. But other than that, I think I can get my legs into shape to take care of that. Tomorrow I'm planing on joining Dan and Leah, and maybe others, on the road to take a little ride to the Jerusalem Forrest.

The route this year starts in Modiin, if you're familiar with the Channukah Story, it is said to have taken place here. By the end of five days we will be finishing at Masada and the Dead Sea. So I guess I have a way to get down there this year, it's just going to be on a bike and not a bus!

I am worried about one thing though, fundraising. I've never done fundraising for myself before. We're kicking it all off by having a bake sale on Sunday to see what we can start raising together. Adding in to my wariness is that I need to do this all from Israel with little "actual" contact with people in the states. I know this is the digital age, but I would feel more comfortable doing this face to face. ?מה לעשות (Mah La'asot). What to do?

If you are a facebook user, I have created a community page. Please follow along there as I post about my progress. I will probably be putting more on that page than on here.

But what organization is this fundraising going towards? The Ride4Reform collects donations that benefit the IMPJ (Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism). Reform Judaism in Israel is very different from back in the USA. The communities are smaller and there are not a ton of them. Part of the issue is that they are at a disadvantage because so many people in Israel see what many call Orthodoxy as the only way to be observant.

The IMPJ is the Israeli version of the URJ that helps support these communities, helps them with outreach and putting out information about being involved in the Progressive Movement here. They also support youth activities and so much more. This is an incredibly important cause to me, especially in light of some of the issues with the "Rotem Conversion Bill" that was in the forefront this summer. I am really excited to help the IMPJ and to have a lot of fun riding across Israel to do it.

If you're looking for more information about the IMPJ, you can visit the IMPJ website.

There is also plenty of information on the web about the Rotem Bill that still has not been defeated in the K'nesset.

A Long, Long Week It's Been

This week has been long, very long. I haven't really updated too much.

Ulpan is almost finished. This week is our last week of the Hebrew only section of our school year. To finish up, I get to work with a partner to create a game to play with our class to help study for the Ulpan final. The final is next Wednesday and I'm pretty nervous about how well I will be able to do on it. At this point, I can just study and hope for the best.

Another part of the finishing of Ulpan is that on Wednesday we will have a chance to perform again for the rest of the HUC Year in Israel class. As a class, we are rewriting the words to David Broza's, Mitachat HaShamayim including jokes that have come up in the last six weeks.

We weren't sure if we would have the same teacher for the Hebrew we will continue to study throughout the year. As a class we were lobbying for her to stay because she is fantastic! Luckily, we get to keep Zohara for the rest of the year and our class is very excited. We learned this for sure during our Academic Orientation last Thursday.

We got to look at our schedule, which this year we have no choice in what the classes are. I knew this was graduate school, but this course load is intense. I am really excited to get started on studying though. We get to have classes on Bible, Biblical History, Liturgy, Modern Hebrew, Biblical Grammar, Modern Israeli History, Rabbinic Texts and one more that I can't really figure out from looking at the grid. Yep, that's eight classes and an optional course with Rabbi Zweibeck that I want to take over lunch on Tuesdays. This is a lot more than the four or five from High School and University of Minnesota. I guess that's why this is grad school and not a vacation, right?

What else has been going on? Rabbi David Ellenson, the President of the College-Institute, was in town and gave a lecture during the week. It was great getting a chance to meet him again. The lecture was good and it was a good introduction to the college. Some of what he mention caused some controversy with some of my friends here. It prompted some good discussion that distracted from studying for the exam we had Wednesday. But maybe that was the point, to get us to start thinking on a different level.

I went for a bike ride on Friday morning. Let me put it this way. Jerusalem is not the best place for a biker. It was a little bit crazy. I really enjoyed the ride with the other people who will be going on the Ride for Reform. One little anecdote though.

I was riding and didn't realize that one of the medians was raised. I noticed that it was up as I was coming up to it and immediately reverted to the last few years of riding a road bike. I braced myself for going over the top of my bike. Here's some great news though, mountain bikes have front-fork suspension for a reason. I barely felt the little bump as I rode over it. No biggie, it's a mountain bike.

Now it's time to get to some homework and studying.

Shabbat Shalom,

I Bought It

Last week I blogged about wanting to buy a bicycle. Once I put my mind to something, I had to go out and get it. After a lot of thought I just decided, I had better spend the extra 500 Sheck to get a nice bike with better breaks. So I went back to Eldar Cycling and bought the bike.



I'm pretty happy with it. It's nothing special. Just a nice 28-speed (8x3) set of gears. The front suspension is alright although while I was biking up the hill home, I noticed that if I pedal the wrong way I put some of my momentum into the suspension and not all into the pedals. I am really happy with the purchase though and it already has a name, thanks Dusty and Leah. The bike is going to be called the Orange Dream-Cycle. I haven't quite decided if it's male or female though.

Riding home though was tough. Not the hills, I can manage those, especially once I figure out how the gear ratio works a little better. It's the atmosphere. This is not a good biking town. You are supposed to bike on the sidewalks, which don't always have an easy way to get onto them. People also park their cars all over the sidewalks. This complicates the situation that involves a lot of trees, dumpsters and other just random stuff in the way. Not to mention the people you need to dodge because they walk like they are daring you to hit them. It's is for this reason I decided to pick up a helmet now and not wait for someone back home to mail me my helmet. Check out the "amazing" helmet I get to wear here.



Since buying the bike, I've taken it out on the streets a few times. I cannot get used to riding on sidewalks. It feels so wrong to be on the sidewalk. On the plus side, it is possible to bike on the wrong side of the road when you're on a sidewalk. Nobody really cares and they stand in your way no matter which side of the road you're on.

The other thing that is taking a while to get used to are the shocks. I'm not used to having a suspension in the front fork. It feels weird not needing to brace when you come across something in the road, or when the path has some change in gradient. Eventually I will get used to this, but I can't wait to get out on the trails.

I Want To Ride My Bicycle, I Want To Ride My Bike

In the last few years I've been getting into biking. Being that I needed to fly to Israel, I chose not to bring my bike with me. Additionally, Jerusalem is very hilly and you don't see a lot of road cycles around because it's really tough to ride one around here.

[Enter Dusty]

She is one of the other students and is taking the lead on organizing the HUC group for the Ride For Reform . This is a 5 day bike ride that covers different parts of Israel every year. Participants raise funds that are donated to promote Progressive Judaism in Israel and I'm really excited to take part in it this year.

From what I understand, she knows someone back in the states that has worked with a bike shop down in the Talpiyot area. Steven, another of the Rabbinic students, knew about this shop too. This morning a bunch of us went down to look and shop around a bit. Walking into the store, there was a fantastic smell that burst through the door when we opened it. It's that smell of rubber and oil that you can only find in a garage or a bike shop. It was great!

The guy working there was very helpful. He showed us a few bikes, talked to us about why we were going to need them and what is our price range. Since none of us really have a clue about off-road biking, we started from the beginning and looked at some of the different types and talked pricing. It turns out I may be getting in deeper than I want to here. The bottom of the line that we looked at will end up costing around 500 dollars. Not brutal, but not cheap either. I also need to think about whether or not I want to bring it back to the states with me or to try and sell it here.

We were measured and the guy working at Eldar Cycling said he will call us when they get some new ones that he thinks we would be more interested in. Overall, it was a pretty exciting morning and I'm really tossing around the idea of whether or not I should just go for it.

Since I don't have a lot of time before Kabbalat Shabbat, I can't really type much more.

Shabbat Shalom