Shalom to everyone,

I’m now on a 6-week vacation from classes.

This weekend was my 21st birthday. To celebrate, we took a trip to Tiberias in the north, one of the four original holy cities. Tiberias is located on the Kinneret, also known as the Sea of Galilee (although there’s no salt). Israel pumps its water to the entire country from this lake.

Our plan was to bike around the entire lake on Saturday. We silly Americans, however, didn’t bother to translate 55km into terms that we understood. It was a 35 mile ride full of surprises. We started with six people, and ended with much fewer. Suzanne, Mira, Ariella, Andrew, Jason and myself were the six.

Suzanne had never learned to ride a bike, so our hostel manager suggested putting her on the back of a tandem. In the morning, however, she woke up very sick, perhaps due to a food poisoning aftermath from earlier that week. She was unable to ride with us. Five people remained.

We set out at 8:30am and it took us half the day to ride about a quarter of the way around the lake. Three hours into the ride we stopped at an intersection to wait up for the people in back. 10 minutes later Mira rode up and told as that she had thrown up. She had ridden to her limit and called for a ride back to the hostel. Four people remained.

Our group’s energy was waning and we continued only for a little longer before stopping for lunch. We sat next to a banana farm and wolfed down copious amounts of pita and humus. After lunch we decided to split up. To stay safe we would create two groups of two: it would be me and Andrew, and Ariella and Jason. Andrew and I set out at a fast pace and the other group kept their own comfortable pace. Now, in a sense, we were down to two people.

Andrew and I made good time for about 20 minutes. Andrew’s recurring knee injury then flared up and put him in considerable pain. Simultaneously, rain started to roll in and we were on exactly the opposite side of the sea from Tiberias. There were no cities around, only farms and a kibbutz here and there. We had 2.5 hours until dark. We decided to push forward.

Although we hadn’t seen any lightning or heard any thunder, the storm decided to place one huge lightning flash directly to the right of Andrew and me. I swear I felt the heat from it and Andrew confirmed that he saw the flash. It was time to find shelter.

Finally we arrived at a gas station. We rested and ate there. An hour later, Ariella and Jason showed up! Now we were four again.

It was Saturday, the day of the Sabbath, so no buses would run until the day was over. We waited until dark and then went outside to the bus stop. Rather than taking a bus home, we ended up coming home with our bikes in a horse trailer full of horse dung. It was quite an adventure!

We’ve returned to Jerusalem and this week I am taking it easy and preparing for next week, when I leave to spend the rest of my break in Thailand.


Danny




I've added some pictures.

The first is Andrew, Myself, Mira, and Ariella with the bikes we rented from the hostel. Jason took the picture.

The last two give an idea of the landscape. The second is banana trees. The blue bags have something to do with harvesting the bananas, but you'll have to ask a banana farmer to find out exactly what.

The third picture is a nice shot of an enormous cactus with Sabra fruit on it. The fruit is tasty if you're able to get to the inside. The inexperienced peeler will end up with plenty of nasty spikes in his or her hands and/or mouth that are worse than stinging nettle.