Thursday, November 04, 2004
The Israel Ride - Prologue
I arrived in Israel on Monday afternoon, October 19th. It was a crazy day. I got picked up at the airport by a very sweet cab driver, Avi, who I ended up spending hours with. His English stunk, and, as a result, I was forced to speak a huge amount of Hebrew over the course of the week.
Avi took me and my bicycle directly to the Express Bike Shop in Talpiyot where we dropped it off to be assembled. We then dropped off the bike box at Alyn Hospital where the bike tour would end on October 28th and where they would dis-assemble my bike again.
From the hospital I went to surprise my daughter at her seminary. She thought I was arriving Tuesday and, indeed, that had been the plan until the previous week when I realized that I needed three days in Tel Aviv for business, rather than two. She freaked when she saw me, literally jumping up and down. It was great.
I hung around the school for a couple of hours, helping my daughter unpack the million things that I brought her. (Apparently they have no tuna, rice pilaf or hair mousse in Israel, to name just three items that I brought).
Avi picked me up and we went back to the bike shop, picked up the assembled bike and finally got to the house where I was staying.
I spent the next three days commuting back and forth to Tel Aviv and having dinner with my daughter and some friends at night.
On Thursday morning before work, I was scheduled to go for a ride with one of the veteran Alyn riders that I had gotten to know (through email and phone calls). When I checked my bike Wednesday evening, I noticed that the tube in the front tire had been changed by the bike store (an apparent flat when they assembled the bike) and, worse, a flat in my rear tire.
I fixed the tire but in doing so somehow messed up the chain. We tried to fix the chain on Thursday morning but couldn't. I ended up missing the ride and taking the bike back to Express Bike where they fixed it in 30 seconds.
Finally, on Friday morning, I went for my first ride. I went out with the veteran rider from Chicago, his sixteen-year-old son and two Israeli brothers, also veterans of the Alyn ride. The brothers were Anglo-Israelis who both seemed to be chisled out of granite. The older brother was in the Army and the younger a senior in Tichon (high school).
We went through Emek Refaim and Talpiyot until we reached the climb to Yad Kennedy. The hills to Yad Kennedy were much steeper and much longer than anything I had encountered in any of my training rides. I found myself sucking air and my heart seemed to be popping out of my chest. My heart rate was way over my aerobic threshhold.
I made it up all the way to Yad Kennedy and started to wonder what the heck I was in for. I asked the boys whether this climb was tougher than what we would see on the tour. They hemmed and hawed. I could tell that they didn't want to spook me but I could also tell that I was in for trouble. When I asked the Chicago rider the same thing he was more forthcoming. Yad Kennedy was not really any big deal.
Thankfully, the ride down from Yad Kennedy was great fun. We dropped off the bicycles at the hospital and took a cab back home.
I would only later find out that the four riders that I went out with were probably four of the top six or eight riders in the entire tour. Riding at my own pace, I would never again ride outside my comfort zone nor be overly challenged by the climbs (some of which, indeed, made Yad Kennedy look like bunny hills).
Avi took me and my bicycle directly to the Express Bike Shop in Talpiyot where we dropped it off to be assembled. We then dropped off the bike box at Alyn Hospital where the bike tour would end on October 28th and where they would dis-assemble my bike again.
From the hospital I went to surprise my daughter at her seminary. She thought I was arriving Tuesday and, indeed, that had been the plan until the previous week when I realized that I needed three days in Tel Aviv for business, rather than two. She freaked when she saw me, literally jumping up and down. It was great.
I hung around the school for a couple of hours, helping my daughter unpack the million things that I brought her. (Apparently they have no tuna, rice pilaf or hair mousse in Israel, to name just three items that I brought).
Avi picked me up and we went back to the bike shop, picked up the assembled bike and finally got to the house where I was staying.
I spent the next three days commuting back and forth to Tel Aviv and having dinner with my daughter and some friends at night.
On Thursday morning before work, I was scheduled to go for a ride with one of the veteran Alyn riders that I had gotten to know (through email and phone calls). When I checked my bike Wednesday evening, I noticed that the tube in the front tire had been changed by the bike store (an apparent flat when they assembled the bike) and, worse, a flat in my rear tire.
I fixed the tire but in doing so somehow messed up the chain. We tried to fix the chain on Thursday morning but couldn't. I ended up missing the ride and taking the bike back to Express Bike where they fixed it in 30 seconds.
Finally, on Friday morning, I went for my first ride. I went out with the veteran rider from Chicago, his sixteen-year-old son and two Israeli brothers, also veterans of the Alyn ride. The brothers were Anglo-Israelis who both seemed to be chisled out of granite. The older brother was in the Army and the younger a senior in Tichon (high school).
We went through Emek Refaim and Talpiyot until we reached the climb to Yad Kennedy. The hills to Yad Kennedy were much steeper and much longer than anything I had encountered in any of my training rides. I found myself sucking air and my heart seemed to be popping out of my chest. My heart rate was way over my aerobic threshhold.
I made it up all the way to Yad Kennedy and started to wonder what the heck I was in for. I asked the boys whether this climb was tougher than what we would see on the tour. They hemmed and hawed. I could tell that they didn't want to spook me but I could also tell that I was in for trouble. When I asked the Chicago rider the same thing he was more forthcoming. Yad Kennedy was not really any big deal.
Thankfully, the ride down from Yad Kennedy was great fun. We dropped off the bicycles at the hospital and took a cab back home.
I would only later find out that the four riders that I went out with were probably four of the top six or eight riders in the entire tour. Riding at my own pace, I would never again ride outside my comfort zone nor be overly challenged by the climbs (some of which, indeed, made Yad Kennedy look like bunny hills).
