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.